Gonchunagon Masafusa

Here is one of the more 'quiet' images in this year's set of ten: the poet Oe no Masafusa. It seems that he was quite an accomplished literary man: my references tell me that he was responsible for a number of books and poetry collections, and was even famous as a poet in Chinese as well.

Last month I talked to you about the printing process, and it seems that perhaps this month's little story is going to follow a similar path ...

As this print is not a particularly 'special' design, and does not use many colours, I thought that I should try and make an effort to make it a bit more interesting by using a special printing technique. I decided to use a 'bokashi', an area of colour gradation. On three or four previous occasions in this series, I have used a bokashi, and when I was looking over those prints before starting this one I noticed something a bit strange. Every time I used a gradation it seems that I made it from the top down - putting the darker, deeper colour at the top, and the lighter area below. This is upside-down! It is much more common that areas of bokashi in Japanese prints are the other way around, of course putting the 'heavier' looking colours at the bottom.

I was wondering about why I had done things in this backward fashion, and finally came up with the answer. The woodblocks are always placed horizontally on the printing bench, the bottom end near the printer's right hand, the top near his left. A bokashi is made by sweeping the brush from the darker area into the lighter area. So a bokashi with the darker region located in the lower area of the print is thus the most natural form for most printers to produce. Most right-handed printers, that is! But of course, as I am left-handed, the situation is reversed. I still place the block on the printing bench in the standard position, but as I use my left hand to hold the brush, my gradations come out the other way.

Now of course, a skilled printer is not limited to making a simple 'bottom-up' gradation of this sort, but must be able to make one in any direction whatsoever - up, down or sideways. It is a question of learning how to hold the brush in different ways. He must be ready to adapt to the needs of whatever design he is printing.

So I guess it's about time that I break out of the pattern of doing bokashi the easiest most natural way, and get some experience of making 'upside-down' gradations. I had to do quite a bit of practice at holding the brush in the new way before I was able to print this design, but it seems to have come out all right.

I suppose that if I had been learning printmaking by working together with a more experienced 'shokunin', he would have trained me properly by making sure that I got plenty of experience in all variations of printing techniques. But working alone as I am, I'm having to discover these things by myself. Even though I realize that it would have been 'better' to have been working side by side with a more experienced craftsman all these years, I recognize that my personality just doesn't work that way. Although I am ready to listen to advice when it is offered, I know that I'd really rather figure things out for myself. But oh, it's taking such a long time to get it all figured out ... I hope you can be patient ...

July, 1997

Translation: William Porter, 1909