Written on March 4, 1992 [Permalink]

March 1

Spent yesterday on the newsletter copy, printing out and proofreading everything twice through. Next step is to send it to Ashida-san and Takayoshi for comments and checking.

Today was the trip to see Ishikawa-san in Utsunomiya, and find out what he is doing with the prints. The girls and I went up on the Shinkansen, and spent about four hours there with them. He's got a nice little second floor gallery near the City Hall, and has the 30 prints to date all framed (nicely), and each accompanied with a framed calligraphic copy of the same poem done by a local name 'sensei'. I think that this is just confusing to everybody's 'eye' - having two different versions of the poem up there side by side, and the room is overly full of stuff as a result, but it's certainly an overwhelming display. What was also overwhelming was the little price notation underneath each print ... 75,000! (It was 'only' 65,000 for the men with 'duller' kimonos, and I had to laugh to see poor old Sangi Masatsune with his sumi kimono for 55,000!) Considering that Ishikawa-san asked me to sell him the set of 30 prints for 7,000 each, I have to wonder what I've let myself in for here ... We didn't have much chance to sit and 'talk about it', as there were people around constantly, but I think that he understands that I don't want to do things this way. I'm going to stick with my intention of dealing with the collectors directly, and not through stores and galleries. He also talked about trying to arrange some sort of demonstration, perhaps at the bank where he used to work (!?), but it would have to be on the basis of 'introducing' me to collectors, and not for promoting sales at 75,000 each ... (How could I look those people in the face..., and what would they think of me when they found out I sold the prints directly for 10,000?) An 'interesting' day.

March 2

Another interesting day. Had to get down to the hanshita preparation for Ise [4-2], which I've been continually putting off. It's full of red and other dark colours, and the hanshita copies I've made so far are all totally unuseable - completely blackened everywhere. Up to now, I've been solving this problem by taking a red marker, and going over the black lines to try and make them stand out a bit against the blackened kimono area when the hanshita is pasted down, but this time that wasn't possible as I couldn't see anything at all ... I then got some thin paper, tacked it over the photograph and tried tracing a few lines to see how it would go if I tried to draw the whole thing by hand, but it was too just difficult to see through the paper - and there's no way that I can draw steadily enough to make 'good' lines. At a loss, I was sitting there flipping through the book of enlarged photographs of the original book, and I noticed that the one of Tenji Tenno was different. Back about four years ago, when I first started carving Tenji Tenno, I made a colour photocopy from the KARUTA book in the library, went over it with a black marker to strengthen the lines, and then used that to make a hanshita the usual way. Starting with the next print, I had colour photographs from the Toyo Bunko negatives, and as I couldn't draw on the photo surface because it was too slick, I drew on the hanshita.

It suddenly struck me that instead of making a standard monochrome photocopy of the photograph on thin paper to use for a hanshita, I could try making a colour copy. Who says that a hanshita has to be black and white? I got on the train, scooted off to Tachikawa, and found a colour copy service. The guy running the machine didn't really want to try using my laminated paper in his machine, but he gave in and we tried it. It works! There's completely no problem with visibility as the black lines stand out perfectly against the red kimono. I got it pasted down, peeled away the excess paper, and she looks great - just like a real colour print somehow drawn on the wood surface.

It's not perfect - the negative for this particular photograph is one of the wrongly made small size ones, so the lines of the photo are thus kind of blurry, and the colour copier also seems to give lines a bit slightly more fuzzy than a regular copier (one in good condition, that is). But it's a gigantic step ahead, and next month I'll try some different machines to see if some of them make even clearer copies. (And boy am I kicking myself to think about the past three years of straining to see all those lines ...!!!!)

March 3

Another day pretty much useless... Meeting in the morning with a group who want me to give a speech in Tachikawa next month, and then school meetings all afternoon. A bit of carving in the evening.

March 4

A good carving day, and cleaned out most of the red areas of the hanshita - the hakama and under kimono areas. The hanshita is definitely too blurry, and I'd better get busy looking for a better quality copier for next month ...