Written on April 10, 1989 [Permalink]

April 8

!!! Within two hours of each other this morning, the blocks from Ita Kane and Kyoto arrived! The cherry block from Shimano san is a great fat thing, by far the thickest board I've ever had. The Kyoto stuff looks OK, except for one of the Ho boards, which is jointed! they also forgot to put on hashibame, so I did it myself (how effectively, I don't know ...).

Also got a phone call from Kansaku Koichi's secretary. Michiyo made an appointment for next Monday afternoon. He can spend an hour with us. I'll wait until I have seen him before I paste my hanshita down on the new block. Maybe he has negatives ...

April 9

Quite a weekend for deliveries. The next batch of paper arrived from Yamaguchi san today. As they explained on the phone the other day, some of the sheets have been cut in half. Apparently they had problems with wrinkling during the sizing ... It doesn't affect me at all, as I cut them in half before using them anyway. There seems to be quite a lot of variance in the thickness of some of the sheets. Some are almost double the thickness of others ...

Took the Sakazakis their copy tonight. They seem to be genuinely pleased with it.

April 10

That cut paper does affect me. The bill for the sizing arrived today, and as they have charged by the sheet, the overall cost is more than it should have been...

Off to Tokyo with Michiyo. First scheduled stop was to have been Ita Kane. We almost didn't get there. Just around the corner from his place we passed an open store-front stacked to the roof (literally ) with bamboo sheaths. Of course we stopped by to see what we could see. Their main business is selling bamboo skins for food packaging, but they also had skins suitable for barens (covering and making), and I bought 10 for recovering my barens. We got talking, and received a miniature discourse on the life and times of baren skins, etc. Interesting people. They gave us a handful of the type of skins that are used for making the innards of the baren after Michiyo told them that she was planning to make barens for me. I didn't know that! The name of the place is Kaneko Shoten. It has apparently been there for 140 or so years.

Next stop, Ita Kane. He was out, but we chatted with his wife for a bit, gave her their print set, and paid for the blocks. When he returned a bit later we discussed the wood situation, etc. It seems that we will be able to get a fairly steady supply of blocks for the rest of the year (one set per month). I have been using Ho for the colour blocks partly because they are cheaper (not by very much!), but generally because it seems a shame to 'waste' the fantastic cherry wood on blocks without fine, delicate lines. He reassured me that there was no trouble with supply of cherry wood, and that forests were not being ravaged, etc. etc., so I asked him to supply cherry for both colour and sumi blocks from now on. He seems resigned to working without a partner or apprentice from now on, as not many young Japanese are particularly interested in his kind of business (to put it mildly!).

Getting late because of the unscheduled stop ... but we zoomed over to Toyo University for our appointment with President Kansaku. He received us cordially, but fairly noncommittally. He showed us the book, and answered questions, but didn't venture much interest. His main interest in Hyakunin Isshu seems to be literary, not visual. I made some notes on the colour separation of the Ono no Komachi design. I touched on the subject of negatives, but he doesn't seem to have any... He gave us a copy of a monograph he had written on the poems, and left us with an offer to come back anytime to study the book. It was then time to race for our train (30 seconds to spare at Ocha no Mizu!), and head back to the day care.

Tonight I pasted the hanshita onto the cherry block from Shimano-san. In the morning, if I can remember how to hold the knife, it's carving time!