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Oil Soot and Pine Soot Inks
Oil Soot Ink （YUEN INK）
Oil soot used for ink can be broadly divided into two types: vegetable oil soot and naphtha soot.
Vegetable oil soot is made from oils such as rapeseed, sesame, and tung oil. Its fine particles allow for smooth, unbroken lines, making it ideal for writing kana (Japanese syllabic characters). Naphtha soot, mainly derived from heavy oils like naphtha, has coarser particles and a pure black color, making it more suitable for kanji (Chinese characters). For children's inks, carbon black is used; its coarse particles make it less suitable for kana writing.
The traditional method for producing vegetable oil soot is called the earthenware pot method. Oil (such as rapeseed oil) is placed in a vessel with a wick, and the wick is lit. A lid is placed above the flame, and soot adheres to the lid. The finer the particles, the higher they rise, so the flame is carefully adjusted to control particle size—smaller flames and longer distance to the lid produce finer particles, while larger flames and shorter distance produce coarser particles. (Even the coarser vegetable oil soot is finer than naphtha soot or pine soot.)
Historically, the amount of soot obtained from a fixed amount of oil was used to rank its quality. For example, from about 43.2 kg of oil, 600 g or 450 g of soot could be collected, called “160 monme batch” or “120 monme batch” ink. Today, most production uses the channel method, a mechanical collection process that is not suitable for producing very fine particles. Fine particle inks like “80 monme” or “100 monme” will become increasingly difficult to produce. At NANSHOEN, ink is still made using traditional methods as long as old stocks of soot are available, labeled as “160 monme batch” and “120 monme batch”.
Naphtha soot is produced by incompletely burning naphtha or similar oils in a silo. Soot adheres to the interior of the silo: the lower soot is coarser, the upper soot is finer, and the middle soot is intermediate. NANSHOEN classifies these as follows: upper soot → Medium Grade I, middle soot → Medium Grade II, lower soot → Medium Grade III.
Pine Soot Ink (SHOEN INK)
The pine soot used in this ink is produced using a traditional method called the direct-fire technique. Pine resin is burned in a small hut enclosed on all sides and the top with shoji screens. The soot generated from the burning resin adheres to the shoji, and this soot is collected. Because the burning temperature of the pine wood varies, the particles are not uniform, which is why even inks of the same brand—especially older ones—can show variations in color.
Pine soot particles are larger than oil soot particles, so when used as a dense ink, it produces a matte black without gloss. When diluted, the ink appears reddish-brown, but over time it may shift to a bluish tone. Please note that even the same brand of ink may have slight color differences depending on the year of manufacture.
Pine soot ink is mainly produced in Kishu (Wakayama Prefecture). In the past, many producers and large quantities of soot made it an affordable and familiar stationery item. However, in recent years, due to declining demand for ink and the decreasing availability of pine wood, both production volume and the number of producers have declined, making this ink increasingly rare and valuable.