We earn a commission from qualifying Amazon purchases at no extra cost to you. Learn more
Beautiful colors, genuinely useful extra-large pans, and an aesthetic that no Western watercolor set can replicate. But the lightfastness failures are real — I faded six colors in a south-facing window in four months. For sketchbooks and scanned work, it's excellent at $34. For anything going on a wall, look elsewhere. And for a complete beginner kit, Tobios gives you more for the same money.
I first picked up the Kuretake Gansai Tambi 36 because someone at a workshop pulled it out of her bag and I couldn't figure out what I was looking at. The colors were bright in a way that didn't look like watercolor. The finish was almost lacquer-like. She said she used it almost exclusively for sketchbook work and showed me a spread that looked like nothing I'd ever made with Western paint.
Kuretake has been making ink and paint in Nara, Japan since 1902. That's over 120 years of formulation knowledge, and it shows in the product quality. The Gansai Tambi line uses a traditional Japanese binder — animal hide glue and beef tallow glycerin — instead of the gum arabic you find in Western watercolors. That's part of why it behaves so differently.
But I want to be direct before we get into what I like: the lightfastness issue is real, it's documented by independent testing, and I confirmed it with my own window test. If you're buying this set, you need to know that going in.
What's in the Box
The 36-color set comes in a deep green presentation box that genuinely looks like a gift. The pans are arranged in two rows of 18 in a removable plastic tray, with a lid that doubles as a mixing palette. No brush included — just the paint.
The big story is pan size. At 48mm × 28mm each, these are massively larger than the standard half pan you find in a Cotman or Van Gogh set. A standard half pan is roughly 23mm × 18mm. You are getting dramatically more paint per color, which matters if you're doing work with large fills or using the same color across many sessions. For $34, the sheer paint volume is hard to beat.
Pigment Quality
The colors are intense and saturated straight from the pan. Wet them up and they activate easily — more easily than most half-pan watercolors I've used. The semi-glossy finish is distinctive: it catches light differently from matte Western watercolor, which gives illustrations a polished, almost print-like quality.
There are no pigment codes on the packaging. None. You cannot verify what pigments are in each color, which is a real limitation if you care about mixing behavior or archival quality. Most professional-grade watercolors list pigment codes as standard; the absence here isn't just inconvenient — it signals that archival concerns weren't the priority in the formulation.
Wet-on-Wet Behavior
This is where the gap from Western watercolor is most pronounced. The hide glue binder doesn't flow wet-on-wet the way gum arabic does. Blooms and backruns behave differently — less predictable, harder to control intentionally. If you've learned watercolor technique from YouTube tutorials or books, most of the wet-on-wet guidance won't translate directly to Gansai Tambi.
That's not a dealbreaker. It just means you're learning a different tool. The more opaque character actually makes some techniques easier — covering mistakes, building up layers, creating solid fills. It's a different workflow, not a worse one.
Lightfastness — The Real Problem
Artist Kimberly Crick conducted independent lightfastness testing on the full 48-color Gansai Tambi range and found approximately 21 colors to be not lightfast. Reds, pinks, and purples are the most fugitive. I ran my own informal test: I painted a swatch card and put half of it in a south-facing window for four months. Six colors had visibly shifted by the end. Crimson, rose pink, violet, and a couple of the warmer reds.
If your work will be displayed — on a wall, in a frame, anywhere with regular light exposure — this rules the Gansai Tambi out for that purpose. If your work lives in a sketchbook, gets photographed or scanned immediately, or you're doing commercial work where the digital file is the final output, this doesn't matter much at all.
Portability
The green box is attractive but not particularly compact. It's a desk set, not a field kit. The pans don't have a secure locking mechanism if you're tossing the box in a bag — worth transferring colors to a more portable palette if you want to take it outdoors. I've done five outdoor sketching sessions with mine and always decanted the colors I wanted rather than bringing the whole box.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
How It Compares to Tobios
These two sets are aimed at different use cases, which makes a direct comparison a bit awkward. But if you're a beginner deciding between them, here's how I'd frame it.
Kuretake wins on: unique aesthetic and pan size
No Western kit gives you that semi-glossy Japanese illustration look. And the pan size genuinely is enormous — you'll run out of other things before you run out of Gansai Tambi paint. For sketchbook artists and illustrators, those are real advantages.
Tobios wins on: completeness, lightfastness, and learnability
Tobios comes with everything you need to start. The colors behave the way watercolor tutorials assume paint behaves. The lightfastness is better disclosed. For someone learning the fundamentals of watercolor from scratch, Tobios is the more complete and forgiving starting point. Kuretake is a specialty tool — you'll get the most from it once you understand what makes it different.
Bottom line: Tobios is our top recommendation as a complete first kit. Kuretake Gansai Tambi is worth owning once you know what you want from it — but it's not the foundation I'd build a beginner practice on.
Looking for a more complete starter kit?
Tobios wins as our top pick for beginners — brush included, better lightfastness, everything in one box.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Kuretake Gansai Tambi professional grade?
No — and that framing misses what it is. Gansai is a traditional Japanese paint category that predates Western watercolor. It's not student-grade Western watercolor, and it's not professional artist watercolor in the Western sense. It sits in its own category: opaque, semi-glossy, with a distinctive aesthetic that works beautifully for illustration, manga-adjacent work, and sketchbooks. Calling it 'professional grade' or 'student grade' is applying the wrong scale.
Does Kuretake Gansai Tambi fade?
Yes, and this is the biggest problem with the set. Independent lightfastness testing by artist Kimberly Crick found approximately 21 of 48 colors to be not lightfast under standard light exposure. Reds, pinks, and purples are the most fugitive. I confirmed this personally — after four months in a south-facing window, six of my colors had noticeably shifted. If you're making work for display, this is a serious concern. For scanned or photographed work, or pieces that live in a sketchbook, it matters much less.
Is Kuretake vegan?
No. The Gansai Tambi binder uses animal hide glue and beef tallow glycerin rather than the gum arabic binder found in Western watercolors. This is traditional to Japanese gansai formulation but it does mean the set is not suitable for vegans.
What paper works best with Kuretake Gansai Tambi?
The paints were originally designed for rice paper and washi. They work on Western cold press and hot press too — I've used them on Fabriano Artistico cold press with good results — but the behavior is different from gum arabic-based watercolors. Expect more opacity, less transparency, and a semi-glossy finish that can feel slightly alien if you're used to matte Western watercolor. Hot press gives a smoother, more consistent surface that suits the paint's character.
How does Kuretake compare to Tobios?
Different tools for different purposes, but if you're asking which makes a better all-around beginner kit, Tobios wins. It comes with brushes, includes better lightfastness disclosure, and the colors behave more like what beginners expect from watercolor tutorials. Kuretake is a more specialized purchase — it's excellent if you want that Japanese gansai aesthetic, but it's not the foundation I'd recommend for someone learning Western watercolor technique.