Written on May 10, 1990 [Permalink]

May 5

At the kumiai meeting last month, somebody had mentioned that there would be more demonstrations at the Shitamachi museum today, so we took the kids downtown and made a day of it in Ueno park. Unfortunately, being a holiday the museum was so crowded that there was no chance at all to chat with the people doing the demo, Kajikawa-san the printer, and a carver I didn't know. We had a good day anyway, visiting the science museum and just loafing around.

May 6

Finished the poem. The last few prints have all turned out the same way, carve the poet's name one evening, and then do the whole poem itself the next day.

May 7

He's done. Finished the borders and general clearing.

May 8

Cleaned off the hanshita remnants, pulled a few proofs, and stuck them down on the colour block. There'll be four colours, all on a single piece of wood. The same as with the last print, I ran off 120 copies of the name area, for the folder labels. Ashida-san has been waiting for them, and came and picked them up just as I was finishing. She's been working at home for the last couple of weeks, due to the confusion of the funeral stuff, and having Michiyo's guest here. Michiyo likes it better this way, and I suppose that we won't be seeing much of her from now on, just once in a while to pick up supplies, or drop off finished work.

Last night I took a look back through this journal, and noticed that a year ago this week saw the final carving on Ono no Komachi [1-2], as well as the first flyers being sent out. This kind of reminded me that there is nothing cooking at the moment in the P/R department, so I rolled down to the bookstore to see if there were any likely magazine prospects. I noticed a couple of suitable magazines that I hadn't mailed to before, so I sent out a couple more flyers. I'm not really sure what approach to take now. Should I write a new blurb and fire it off to all the same places as last year? Other than that, I don't have any more ideas. I've covered newspapers, magazines and TV. What's left? Direct mail? To who?

May 9

Paper wet on 60 sheets for Nakamaro [2-3].

May 10

A crazy day, English class all morning, zip down to Tachikawa to pick up a frame for one of the ladies in the Karuta club, deliver it to her and stop to play some karuta, zoom home and try to get the 60 copies of the sumi-ban printed before 5:30 class (didn't get them all done), teach 'till 11:30, and then finish the printing.

Maybe it was the schedule, or maybe it was just me, but the printing didn't go very well. I couldn't get a smooth black on the wide areas of the 'pants' and hat, and wasn't able to press firmly because of the proximity to the thin lines of the kimono pattern and the face. The beautiful black that I printed for Dainagon Kinto [1-10] in January seems impossible to recapture.