Written on January 31, 1992 [Permalink]

January 28

Two days down, four to go. It's going quite well, with a fairly steady flow of people coming through. Two orders the first day, one by phone from Niigata-ken (Sankei Shimbun - thank you!). Ms. Takeda wants the whole thing - 100 prints, 30 back numbers right now, and the rest by subscription. Sight unseen!

The other order was also interesting. A Mr. Kanai (Sankei Shimbun - thank you!) came in and talked about his 'Hyakunin Isshu' project. He has finished 33 of the 100, and expects the rest to take about seven more years. Sound familiar? Hanga? No ... music. He is writing songs to match each poem, in various musical styles - choral, folk, pop, etc. He left me a tape which I played that evening at home, and it's quite interesting. I'm looking forward to hearing the rest as they come ... We played it at the gallery today, while the visitors were browsing around. He signed up for the coming year's set, and perhaps I'll use him in the customer profile section of the newsletter ...

Today's 'action' was quite different. There were no orders, but it was productive, with one TV crew (local cable) and four reporters coming through. I'm to appear on the front page of Shin Bijutsu Shinbun (Feb 21), a feature story in the 'Kosei' Shimbun 'Kokoro no Hiroba' column (Feb 7), and some kind of story in the Asahi Shimbun (Tama or Tokyo?) tomorrow or the day after. Hirano-san, the reporter from the local Yomiuri, also came over for another interview. I'm not sure why. Is he planning another story so soon? Who knows...

January 30

A very busy, but quite disappointing day. Got a nice start on the way to the gallery when I picked up an Asahi newspaper and found an excellent 1/4 page story on the exhibition on the Tama page. The phone at the gallery rang off the hook all day with people asking for directions, etc., and the attendance was good. What was better was that they were mostly people quite interested in what was going on; asking questions, reading all the material, discussing this and that. Prime candidates for subscriptions. I talked and demonstrated non-stop until about 6:00. Orders? None. They all say 'This is wonderful', bow, say thank you, and walk off. What do I have to do to get them excited about this? If I don't get a bunch of orders this week, I'm in trouble. There's just enough cash around to pay the end of the month household bills, and I've let the washi bill wait until February. The Kogado bill will also be coming in next week. The order from Niigata should help postpone disaster for a few weeks ...

Azuma-san, the elderly hanga hobbyist, came in again today bringing an old wood block that somebody had given him. It's a very finely carved drawing of a kind of daruma, probably Meiji era. I printed a couple of copies, which turned out well. There is lots of 'kasuri-bori' (did I remember that right?), where the carving imitates a brush running out of ink. The effect is very pleasing, and I wonder if I should start to do some of my calligraphy carving that way. The original is all carved 'cleanly', and perhaps I should best leave it that way ...

[ find this for a photo ... ]

January 31

What can I say? A replay of yesterday... lots of people, lots of interest ... and no orders.

Himi's school classes were cancelled today because so many kids are home with the flu or something, so she was there all day. Late in the afternoon, she went by herself over to the daycare center by train and brought back Fumi-chan. They'll be with me at the gallery for the next two days from morning right through the day ...

Mr. Furuya from the Seibu bank dropped by in the evening while the girls were in the bath. He had come a few months ago to talk about a possible appearance in their bank newsletter, which has an arts feature page. That's apparently still pending. The idea this time was different - he wants to promote the use of my print designs on an NTT telephone card series. I'm not sure what connection he has to NTT, but seems to think that if I OK the idea, he can get it to happen.

I'm not sure what to think. It's kind of plus/minus ... The benefits would include exposure, perhaps lots of it, as well as payment for use of the designs. It would make quite a nice 'collectable' series. On the down side ... would I be 'cheapening' the project with the mass production of the designs? Would it hurt the customers who are paying 10,000¥ each for the prints to find that they could buy the image for 500¥? Or would they be pleased to have the cards in addition to the prints? Only one way to find out - I'll have to ask some of them... Furuya-san is going to call back later. He just wanted to get my initial reaction before taking it any further. I asked him to 'go ahead and look into it'.