Written on May 10, 1992 [Permalink]

May 10

Back to my old bad habits - not keeping this journal up to date ... After the TV day in Tokyo, finished off the colour blocks on Sanekata [4-3] and spent a day making test prints, trying to find a good colour for the kimono. I had thought about using a deep, deep green, but the dark colour just looked too gloomy when I tried mixing something, and I finally settled on a double printing - a light green followed by a light blue on top. It thus turned out that I made more work for myself. There are other areas on the print using those two colours, and I should have included the kimono area together with them. I thus have four printings to do, when I could have used two.

I got busy with some pieces of spare wood and the table saw, and made some aisuki handles. I was only able to scrounge one sewing machine needle from a local awning maker, and will have to try and find some in Tokyo somewhere ...

The TV day on Tuesday was pretty much like all the previous sessions, except that everything seemed to take twice as long as it should have. Furuichi-san doesn't seem so experienced at this, and kept coming up with 'new ideas' to try and fit in. Just like the session in Tokyo last week, things got later and later. After they shot the printing demo, she had the idea of doing a kind of 'animation' of the colours appearing on the print (after I had used up all my prepared paper). I had to get a new sheet out, moisten it, and then try and print colours one by one, with them taking the paper in between and pinning it up on a board for filming. Of course it instantly dried out under the lights, and it was a crazy job trying to keep the colours registered properly, and the impression smooth. If it worked, it should be interesting to see ... They wrapped up at about 5:30 and headed for Yamashita-san's place for a short interview with him.

The printing should have started Sunday night, but with the TV crew coming Tuesday there would be no way to finish in time, so I made the paper wet on Monday, and printed the sumi after they left on Tuesday, followed by colours over the next two days, and shipping on Friday. Thursday night - Friday morning was a real scramble. I wrote the blurb for the print at the last minute, and with Michiyo going to bed at nine and leaving at 3:00 am every day to go work at the bakery, there's almost no way to get our schedules to overlap to do things like this translation. Friday morning I had to dry the prints, check them over and sign them, while Ashida-san and Shintani-san stood there waiting to get them shipped. It's interesting that even a 'simple' print like this, with no kimono pattern and not so many colours still took a full month to make. Ise was shipped on the 10th, this one on the 8th.

I prepared paper for the second run before the first was finished, just kept on printing, and finished up on Sunday morning. I also experimented a bit with the moisture balance this time. Last week at Matsuzaki-san's place I had been struck again by how wet and soft his paper was. I've seen it before, but many times when I try it the impression comes out too 'wet', blurry and fuzzy. The printing impressions on the lighter colours on Ise last month were not smooth enough, and I think that the paper was too 'hard', so I tried to get it softer this time, but without it becoming too 'wet'. It seemed to work. I kept the newsprint much damper, and didn't seem to have many problems with blurry printing.

So what else has gone on this week? I had pasted down the hanshita for Doin Hoshi [4-4] and started the first carving while the TV crew was here, and then a bit more on Friday while the women were wrapping. This one looks positively easy, and surely I can get caught up a bit this month ...

And there's also some bad news to report. Shintani-san came over Saturday morning with some boxes with all her folder making tools. She's quitting. When I pressed her a bit to try and find out why, she told me that she has a 'philosophical' problem with some of the prints. Making folders for prints of buddhist priests is giving her Christian conscience trouble! (I managed to keep a straight face when she told me!) I debated whether of not to try and suggest that she could be a bit more tolerant, as my project is not exactly proselytizing buddhism, but decided not to even get into it. Ashida-san said on the phone later in the day that she would be able to handle things, but having just one person doing it makes me a bit nervous, and I think I'll scout around for a replacement ...