Written on May 26, 1992 [Permalink]

May 18

A fairly active week. The carving on Doin Hoshi [4-4] is going well, and I got the figure finished last Friday. The last few days have been tied up with other activities. On Saturday I went out to Sagamihara to visit Kanai-san, the Hyakunin Isshu composer, to get some background for his story in the next newsletter. He seems like a nice guy, and it turns out that he's been working on his project for 17 years already, and has got 53 done. (He's 65, and I have to wonder if he's going to make it!).

Sometime last week there was a call from a guy with the Tokyo Computer Salon (did I get it right?). They want me for some kind of demo/discussion. On hanga, or computers? He's calling back later to set up the details...

Sunday was the kids' school sports day, and today was pretty much taken up with preparation for the upcoming demo for the CWAJ crowd. I spent time trying to get the pamphlet/order form re-written to make things just a little bit clearer. I think the 30 or so ladies that will be at the meeting will be pretty good prospects for subscribers, and I don't want to waste the opportunity ...

I got the last article wrapped up for the next newsletter, and was cooking so well at the word processor that I kept going and did one for the Fall issue as well! Actually, I'd like to get that whole issue at least written and translated, if not pasted up, before we go down to the country in August. I don't want Michiyo to be doing it in September. She's going to be plenty busy enough ...

May 21

Tuesday was a good carving day, and finished all the 'to' work on the key block, including the borders and the poem.

Wednesday was mostly taken up with preparation for the possible fall printmaking course that the CWAJ people want to run. I prepared a package for each of them consisting of a master to use for drawing the design, some sample designs copied from a kiri-e book, and a list of materials, etc... They're having trouble finding a location, and it might not come together ...

The demo on Thursday was OK. Getting down there was a drag, hauling my big box on the rush hour trains and subway. I had sent a couple of boxes with the heavier stuff in advance by takkyubin, and I should have probably also sent the box (but I wanted to carve during the few days before ...) Everybody was friendly, and it was an informal couple of hours chatting and printing. I was a bit disappointed to find that there were no Japanese there. Everybody was from the expatriate crowd, which kind of made it useless to talk about subscriptions, etc., but it was an enjoyable day nonetheless.

May 24

The sumi-ban is finished, and the colour transfers made and pasted down. I tried something a bit different this time. When making the Sanekata print last month, I ended up in a situation where I had to spend much more time on the printing stage because of poor planning when carving the colour blocks. If I had done some experiments with colour overlapping before carving, I would have saved a lot of time, so before starting barging ahead on this print, I took the time to make a 'colour test bench'. It's a small wooden board with slots cut into it, in which some blank pieces of wood can be fitted in 'crossing' positions. It allows me to mix three colours and then test print them to see all possible overlapping combinations (seven tones - A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, ABC). As it happens, there are seven different colour areas on this month's print, and I thought it would be neat to do the whole thing with just three impressions, rather than seven.

It seems to work OK. I don't know if I found very exciting colours for the print, but the test board certainly helped ...

The newsletter is now all in the word processor, and we're starting the long process of proofing, checking and re-writing. This is the worst part of the job, and the one that causes the most friction between me and Michiyo. And of course, we always find the last few mistakes when the thing comes back from the printer ...

A visit today from Mr. Mikami, the gentleman from the Tokyo Computer Salon who called a week or so ago. My demonstration is set for the 26th of next month, somewhere down near Tokyo Station. If I understand correctly, it's his turn to provide a guest for one of the regular meetings of the group, and as he was apparently one of the guests at the Kichijoji demo last year, he looked me up for this affair. He seems to think that I'll also get a 'bunch' of new subscriptions, as most of the members are 60+ year old, company president types. He has promised a fee of 50,000 yen, which I tried to say was on the high side, but he just waved me off. He wants 'exactly the same' demo and chat as the one he saw previously. Should be fun ...

May 26

Monday carved the colour block - three areas on one piece of wood. I'm going to try printing it the way I worked out on Sunday, using just three colours to make seven. Actually a few of them will be so similar that I don't think anyone will notice ...

Today printed the 120 name labels for the folders, and then in the evening, sumi on 60 sheets. Afternoon was newsletter work - layout board preparation and re-writing, checking, re-writing ...