Written on April 16, 1990 [Permalink]

April 15

Off to Tokyo in the morning to hang the stuff in the Foreign Correspondents Club. This was dead easy, as they have a bunch of easily adjustable hangers spread around the room. I just had to roll them along the track to the horizontal position I wanted, and then adjust them to the correct height. It only took about five minutes to get them all up in place. What took longer was getting the labels put up, and I ended up taping them to the bottom of the frames, as it wasn't possible to pin them to the walls, as I had planned. Sheila was helpful, and suggested that the front desk would be quite happy to take orders for prints if somebody wanted any, and would be willing to help promote them in whatever way they could. I don't really anticipate making any sales here, but it certainly seems like a good place to get some media contacts ...

When I got home it was time for sumi on the 60. Trouble with the moisture level - the paper was almost bone dry. Michiyo had used my regular moistening brush for painting some of her new shelves, so I had had to use another brush I found in the tool box. It obviously held less water, but I thought that I had compensated for that when I was moistening last night. No way. After printing two sheets, I gave up and re-moistened the stack, then wrapped it up for another try later tonight.

Tried again in the evening, and of course the paper was way too wet. I had to lay it out on the floor for a few minutes to try and get some of the water out of it before printing.

April 16

Ashida-san was here today, and spent the morning wrapping up the stuff that I had left for her on Saturday. She called the Post Office, and they came and picked up their stack. She got on her bike and delivered some of the local ones, and I'll do the rest myself tomorrow.

Printed the colours, not being able to get done before my Japanese class, but finished them when I got home after. As I expected from yesterday's troubles, water was a problem. I'm obviously going to have to get a 'real' brush for moistening, learn how to use it, and then hide it from everybody else in the house.... In any case, the prints turned out well, with only a few spoiled. Even so, there were enough rejects from the two batches, that I don't have enough good copies, so I prepared another 14 sheets for printing. April 17 Printed the sumi on the 14 in the morning, and then got on the bike and finished the balance of the local deliveries. Yamashita-san wasn't in, but I left his prints with his secretary. During Yukiko's class that evening he called and asked Michiyo to have me come round when I was free (that night) and collect my money. She tried to tell him that I wouldn't mind if he paid next month, or anytime, but he wasn't having any of it, and basically demanded that she send me over when I came out of the class.

I trotted round there, collected the money, and then spend the next couple of hours talking/listening to his plans for his museum. He's really going at this seriously, and fully expects to have it up and running an about five years. He's obviously got the resources, with the land that he's sitting on, and his collection of paintings. The discussion mostly centered on the prospective locations. He's got it narrowed down to three areas, with the biggest concern being traffic. He expects that the place would run on what it could garner from people out for a drive, or on vacation, who would stop by. The focus would be his collection of nihon-ga, with a gallery of glass pieces from France, and another gallery set aside for ..... yes, you guessed it, Shunsho's 100-nin Isshu series. He also intends to choose his location in an area where the surrounding land is cheap enough that various artists, artisans, or other workmen could afford to come and set up their homes/workshops. This is interesting, and who knows, maybe one day we'll be living there out in the boonies one day, in association with the Yamashita Bijutsukan.