Posted by Dave Bull at 2:28 AM, January 26, 2012 [Permalink]
Everybody has heard of course about the huge triple disaster that hit this country last spring - the earthquake, tidal wave, and nuclear plant problems - but not too many overseas friends heard about the 'second wave' of trouble we had last year.
A couple of major typhoons swept across many parts of the country, and these were of the 'once in a hundred years' type. Although not on the same scale as the devastation up north, they caused a huge amount of damage, and also many deaths.
As it happens, the village where my children's mother grew up was greatly affected, both by floods and landslides. One of my long-time collectors - Mr. Shigeyoshi Ushiro - lives there, and I wrote about him in a newsletter story many years ago, featuring the log house he was building at the time.
Well, I have sad news to report. His house - although built on what everybody thought to be completely safe ground, well up from the river - was flooded up to the second story. Pretty much everything inside was destroyed ...
He doesn't have any video of the event, but he took a number of photos, and threaded them into a slideshow he has uploaded to YouTube:
And at 4:19 in that video, press the pause button and take a look. Over at the left, sitting on top of a pile of stuff, is a small brown box with a print on top. Here's a screenshot:
Yes, Ushiro-san was able to report to me that the Mystique of the Japanese Print set has a 'feature' that I can't honestly say that I planned ... it floats.
The box was picked up from the desk by the rising water, and deposited there in the next room when the levels receded again. He says that the prints inside are fine, and that the one on display on top must have just sat there peacefully while the box sailed around the room.
The rest of the news is not so good. Ushiro-san has been collecting my prints since 1989, and has everything I have made. They were in two places: the '100 Poets' set was in a room upstairs, where it came through completely unscathed.
But all the rest - the Surimono Albums, the Beauties series, and everything else - were on shelves under the stairs. And no, they didn't float.
I've talked to Ushiro-san about replacing many of them from my 'overstock' here, but he has asked me to hold off 'for now'. He's not quite sure how he wants to proceed with his life from here on, and it sounds like he will be abandoning the log house, and returning to the city. He really doesn't seem to be in much of a mood to accumulate things just now. There isn't much I can do about it, but wait and see what he decides ...
