Written on September 29, 1989 [Permalink]

September 28

A busy English day, but got some bookkeeping done - paid Ita Kane, Muse, and the knife maker in Niigata.

After the ladies class was finished this morning, one of the members said that she had seen the newspaper article yesterday, and that her husband seemed interested in obtaining the prints. She asked if he could see them, so I said that I'd get a sample pak ready, and then give her a call.

September 29

One of those days ... Tried pasting the hanshita for Chunagon Asatada [1-7] onto one of the new blocks from Ita Kane. I say 'tried', because it was a disaster. I used the same paper, same glue, same technique as always, but it just wouldn't work - the copy paper refused to peel off the back of the tracing paper after they were laid onto the block. There's torn bits of paper, glue lumps, and missing pieces everywhere. This one is going to be a bugger to carve anyway, without additional problems like this. I'll start preparing a new one tomorrow.

Gave it up as a bad job, and started in on the mountain (literally) of translation work waiting, but the first one I pulled off the stack was so unintelligible it seems to be written in a language I don't understand ... The phone rings, and it's a Mr. Nishikawa in Kokubunji who has read the Asahi Shimbun yesterday. Ahh! Maybe our luck will turn ... He wasn't interested in hanga, but he 'happened to have' a stack of cherry blocks lying around, and would I be interested in having them? Of course I expressed interest, and we arranged for me to drop over to see them in the afternoon. On the way over there, visions of a 'treasure trove' of beautiful blocks danced through my head (he had said there were 'lots' - and that they had been stored for 30 years). Well, there was lots - and they had been stored for 30 years - standing end up on the wet ground. They had rotted to about the consistency of balsa wood, and I don't think they would even make good firewood! It's really too bad, because he was a very interesting guy, 85 years old, an active sculptor, painter, etc. etc., and seemed quite interested in 'helping out' with the project. One of those days ...

It's funny that the only two phone calls from the newspaper article on Wednesday have both been from elderly gentlemen, with something that sounded great on the telephone, but which turned out to be a complete dud in reality. Is that all we're going to get from it ...?