Written on March 13, 1990 [Permalink]

March 1

Our first pay-day. Ashida-san worked 27 hours last month, and so got an envelope with 27,000 yen today. She's produced 90 folders, a hundred or so labels, and compiled and wrapped up six complete sets. This would have been maybe two days for me, and considering that I can print a good 50 copies in two days (500,000 yen worth), there's no problem paying her the 27,000. I'm sure also, that she'll be getting quicker as time goes by.

March 2~5

The carving, the whole carving, and nothing but the carving. I've got to get this one [2-1] finished soon, or the new customers will all be wondering if I'm still in business. I was originally shooting for the beginning of March, but then switched to telling people 'about the 15th'. I'm nearly finished the poem now, so I think that next weekend should see some printing...

March 6~10

Well, here we are at 'next weekend', and there isn't going to be any printing. I'm ready, but the block makers aren't! During the last few days, I finished the sumi-ban and one of the colour blocks, but am now waiting for more blocks to show up. Neither Shimano-san nor the people at Aoyama shoten in Kyoto have seen fit to send me anything. Is this a conspiracy? I still have one block left from Shimano-san's last shipment, but it's the most beautiful, hard and straight-grained piece I've ever seen, and there's no way I can use it for a colour block. Please, guys - let's get going!!!!

This last week, Ashida-san has been making more folders, and started to prepare the packaging for sending out Koko Tenno. She's getting faster all the time, and yesterday she turned out 40 nicely made folders. Since she came, I've done no work at all on the 'extra' stuff, but have stuck to working on the blocks.

The 'results' are now nearly all in from the samples sent out after Jean Pearce's column appeared. 10 sample sets went out to prospective customers, resulting in 6 new subscriptions, and 5 'back orders' for last year's set. Two samples were returned - 'Thanks, but no thanks' The other two are still undecided as to a purchase, but interestingly, both of them will be 'showing your prints to a friend in the print business in London' The subscriber list now stands at 29. I had expected that about half of the customers who had received Dainagon Kinto last month would 're-enlist', but I was wrong. Out of the 9 people who completed the first year set, 8 have so far signed on again, and only one has not contacted me yet. Nearly all of the eight also made it clear that they intend to 'go all the way' to 100. The finances look pretty good. With all those sales of sets last month, the cash is sitting at about 800,000. There's nothing owed, either 'in' or 'out' although the cases that are on order from Kogado will eat up about 250,000.

What's coming up? There's a two week exhibition arranged for late April at the Foreign Correspondent's Club, and a three page nationally distributed colour magazine article due near the end of this month. Things are cooking. Not boiling yet, but simmering away.

March 11

Prepared 50 sheets for a run of Koko Tenno [2-1]. As I still don't have enough blocks to finish carving this guy, I went over to the home center and picked up a couple of sheets of plywood, and carved the last two colour blocks on these. When the 'real' blocks show up one of these days, I'll recarve them, but for now, I'll have to use this stuff.

March 12

Printed the sumi on the 50, and during the run, the package from the block maker in Kyoto came - 4 cherry blocks. So last night's work carving those plywood blocks was completely wasted. In the afternoon, re-carved the necessary areas - on cherry.

A very 'educational' evening. Started trying to print the first couple of colours, using the blocks carved this morning. They were totally unusable - all the proportions were wrong, and no amount of adiustment of the kento would fix them. The five transfer sheets for the colours were prepared last week sometime, and three of them stuck down just after they were made. The last two have been sitting on my desk since then. It's been rainy all week, but today is clear and very dry. Obviously, the sheets must have shrunk, throwing everything out of whack. The only way I could do the printing tonight was to use the plywood blocks that I carved yesterday (I had printed fresh hanshita sheets for these!). I have always made it a habit in the past not to keep these sheets sitting around, but have always pasted them down within a few minutes of printing them.

March 13

Finished the printing. I was a bit worried about finding suitable colours. There are three different colours going on top of the basic kimono colour, and I wasn't at all sure that I would find a way to balance the four of them. He seems to have turned out OK. Hopefully Ashida-san will be able to put these all into their folders, wrap them in the plastic bags along with the blurbs, paste up the blue cases, prepare the cardboard wrapping, write out the mailing labels, fill out the post office slips, wrap everything, and get them to the post office etc. etc. ... before another month has gone by!

In the evening, I stacked up this month's prints and folders ready for her to start on in the morning. With the new customers, the repeaters, those still working away at last year's subscription, and the freebie copies, there's 35 prints ready to go!

I'm also going to have to do another run of this one next weekend after English classes wind up. There's only about 10 copies left.