Sangi Hitoshi

We'll finish off this year's set the same way as last year, with a dramatic standing figure in a black kimono. My reference books aren't able to tell me very much about Hitoshi. Based on the image I have been carving these past weeks, I was expecting to learn that he was a well-known archer. This doesn't seem to be the case however, but simply artistic license on Shunsho's part (Perhaps he got tired of drawing people holding those formal little scepters!).

I was faced with an interesting little problem this month. When the carver was working on the colour blocks for this print back in 1775, he made a small error while doing the block for the brownish colour. He left a small area of wood in place that should actually have been carved away, resulting in some brown colour appearing where it did not belong. When it came time for me to make my brown block, I had to make a decision - should I rectify the tiny error, or reproduce it? Whenever I speak to professional carvers and printers on this matter, they all say the same thing - 'Fix the mistakes. Do it better!' I think though, that to fix something like this would be to remove a bit of the character of the print. Shunsho's book wasn't made by some kind of printing machine - it was made by men, and while I was chiseling away at that little area of the woodblock, I felt conscious of some kind of communication between myself and that long dead carver. That little spot of brown colour somehow proves to me that he was alive. Erasing it would be just like erasing his existence. Excuse me for getting mystical about this, but I have left it in place.

It shouldn't take you too long to find the part of the print that I am talking about, and when you do, please excuse our carver friend for his error (a very easy one to make, I can promise you). I can only hope that future viewers of my work will be as forgiving.