Written on September 26, 1990 [Permalink]

September 23

Off to Tokyo (with the family) to visit Numabe-san in Oji. He had called a couple of weeks ago and invited us over. I'm sure his basic reason was to try and get us involved with his religious group, but I tried to make it clear on the phone that although we were interested in visiting him and his family, we weren't into the SGI stuff ..

We enjoyed the time there. They fed us a great lunch, and we chatted about his work, and printmaking in general. He is making mostly copies of nihonga, on commission from a publisher. The one he is currently making will take three months to produce the required 350 copies! Not for me, that kind of work .... I also felt bad about some of the circumstances surrounding his work, including the fact that he doesn't even get his name on the finished prints as the 'printer'. That honour goes to his 'oyakatta-san' It will be many years yet before Numabe-san can use his own name for his own work. (He's only been at it 17 years!)

In the evening, 60 sheets wet for Ise no Taifu [2-8].

September 24

Sumi on the 60, and the first carving on Kotai Gogu no Daibu Shunzei [2-9], whose kimono pattern will take as long to carve as his name!

September 25

Colour on the 60. I made the tray a slightly different colour, and took some of the black out of the hakama colour at Michiyo's request (she still didn't like it!). None of them got messed up today, but in the sumi printing yesterday, I spoiled a bunch of them by 'hitting' with the baren. I think that I should put some more thin paper under the baren coil to raise the center a bit. The baren is too flat, and the edge easily bumps into places it shouldn't. I noticed Numabe's barens(s) on Sunday were all heavily 'bent'.

A phone call in the late afternoon from the Tama edition of the Mainichi Shimbum. I guess this is from last week's mailing. Mainichi is the only major newspaper that didn't do a feature on us last year. We arranged for them to come and do their interview tomorrow afternoon. Good to get some action at last!

September 26

Delivered Yamashita san's 'back number' prints this morning, as arranged, and found out just why he had asked me to come at this particular time. He was having a visit from his banker, Mr. Ozawa, the manager of the Saitama bank Ome branch. It got a little embarrassing when he started to press my case pretty hard! "These would look great in the bank lobby ..." He's trying!

I had some time in the early afternoon before the Mainichi interview, so I prepared a second flyer, this time designed for those magazines that run a New Year's issue. I tried this last year, and drew a total blank. If at first you don't succeed ..... I wrapped up 18 of them, and labelled them for a bunch of women's magazines.

The interview in the afternoon was a good one. He was a youngish reporter, and keen to get the thing done right (although I have doubts about his photographic ability!). He especially seemed interested in 'helping us', and even asked what kind of things we would like to emphasize in the article. It seems that it will appear in the Tokyo-ban (this is a first!), and is part of a series on ... you guessed it foreigners doing 'Japanese culture'. What was quite surprising was his comment as he was leaving that it 'would probably appear tomorrow'