Written on September 26, 1989 [Permalink]

September 24

Finished the 40 copies of Oeno Chisato [1-6]. I think 34 are suitable for customers - a good percentage (for me!) I had been talking with Noguchi-san, the printer at the Shitamachi museum last week, about smooth colour printing, and he had suggested printing the blocks first without any colour at all, just paste, in order to flatten the paper ready for an impression with pigment to follow. I tried this method today, for the kimono and the 'pants'. I can't decide if it worked well or not. The final colour seems relatively smooth on most of the copies, but it is still far short of a real professional standard. I've really got to get over to Seki-san's again (or Matsuzaki!), and hopefully try to get him to print - not talk! Recovered my baren twice today, a first for me. Because it's still fairly frustrating trying to get a nice neat tying job, I used to put off the recovering as long as possible, but recently I've been doing it much more frequently. I'm getting a bit better at tying the cover, but it still doesn't look anywhere near as good as the sample from Matsuzaki-san that I've got hanging on the wall as a reminder of how it should be done. It's funny to remember that in Canada, I used the original cover for years!

September 25

An odds-and-ends day. Printed the little labels for the cover of the Oeno Chisato folders, wrapped and mailed seven prints, ordered 50 more backboards from Muse, did the Asahi interview, and worked on the hanshita for Chunagon Asatada [1-7].

The interview went pretty well. It was pretty much the same set of questions/answers that seem to come up with each one of these newspaper people. Yuse-san, the reporter-photographer, seemed to be interested in what she was doing, and I think the story will be OK. She promised that she would include the phone number - after hearing my sob story about trying to quit English teaching etc. ... If she does, it should gather a few more ...

The hanshita is going to be a tough one - the kimono colour is black/grey, so none of the kimono pattern lines came out clearly on the hanshita and I'm drawing them all on by hand. This is going to be a tough one to carve. the pattern is full of gently curving parallel lines, and any unsteadiness in the knife will definitely show up in the finished prints.

Had a visit today from a lady connected with the local community center. They are having some kind of a 'culture festival' in late November. These are different people from the 'kominkan', who are doing the big 'bunka' festival on 'bunka' day in early November. Confused? So am I. Anyway, they want stuff for display, and maybe a live demo of printmaking. Of course, I responded enthusiastically, and she will get back to me with details later.

September 26

Off to Shimo-Fujisawa, in Saitama prefecture, to visit Gosho-san, the baren maker. Michiyo was too busy with her translation to come, so I hopped on the bike and tried to find the place. From Hamura to the station plaza in his town was about one hour. From the station plaza to find his place took another hour ... and it turned out to be a distance of about 100 meters! He and his wife were quite cool and reserved at first, and seemed to be in a bit of a panic with a 'hairy foreigner' in their house, but when they realized that I could speak with them (somewhat), they soon warmed up, and we had an enjoyable discussion-demonstration session. I had taken Michiyo's partially completed baren-making work with me, and he was able to set us right on a number of places where we had gone astray. Now if only she had time ...!

They seemed pretty impressed with my work, and were quite encouraging (nobody asks how well the bear can dance ...). I put in an order for a medium 'yakko' (8-strand) baren, that should fill the gap between the two that I am using now. I didn't ask the price, but I guess it'll be around ¥50,000. It'll be ready in about a month. When it arrives, it will 'fill the gap' in my toolkit - all the tools that I will be using will be of 'real' professional quality. The woodblocks, paper, pigments, knives, brushes and baren - all are the same ones that the pros use. Any defects in the work from now on will only be attributable to one thing - my skill and experience.

In the evening a phone call came from Sylvia Mair, the Australian woman who visited just before the summer. It seems that next March (six months away!), her daughter's school (an international school in Hiroo) is having a 'Japan Week', and the principal is looking for people to demonstrate some traditional Japanese crafts, etc., She thought that I would make a good choice, being able to not only demonstrate the work, but also able to explain to the kids and parents what was going on. If I'm interested, I am to write a note to the principal outlining a plan for the event, etc. etc., and I think I will!

September 27

The blocks are here! Just before the afternoon English class, the Takkyubin man delivered four beautiful slabs of cherry. Thank you Shimano-san!

A strange phone call came in today, and luckily Michiyo was here to take it, because I'd never have understood what he was talking about. A man from Chofu called and talked about ordering 5 copies each of a bunch of our prints. We didn't quite understand what he meant by the '3-D art' that he kept on about, and he said that he'd drop round to see us. About 2:30 he showed up, bringing with him a sample - multiple copies of a postcard of a Hokusai print all sliced up and glued into a three dimensional type of collage. As soon as I saw what he was up to, I didn't want to get involved, even if he wanted a 100 copies, and we managed to turn him on to the idea of making colour photocopies from book illustrations of prints, rather than cutting up real ones. What was more interesting than his request, was the fact that he had learned about us in his morning paper, the Asahi Shimbun.

It turned out that Monday's interview resulted in a story in today's paper, only two days later. I zipped over the the station and picked up a copy. It's an average article, not as good as the 'Foto' story, but not bad either (although Michiyo is curious as to why they said she was born in Canada!). There are a couple of 'little' problems: the photo looks like Rasputin reincarnate, the price is stated as a lump sum of ¥100,000 for the set, which may put people off, and they quoted my imbecilic admission that I wasn't really happy with some of the printing quality, which should put even more people off! I can't complain though, and it's possible that we may make some interesting contacts from it. The next few days should show. I'll send her a letter thanking for the coverage.