Lady Koshikibu

And here, for the 98th print in my set, we come to the final lady poet in the series. We had the mother, Izumi Shikibu, a few years ago, and now it is the daughter's turn, Koshikibu no Naishi. She is not noted for the volume of her poetry, and I am told that her reputation rests mostly on the fact that she was able to produce this poem, with its multiplicity of double meanings and word play, in a matter of just a few seconds, upon being 'surprised' with a sudden challenge.

Most of the prints I produce are made with the same 'recipe' - a sheet of washi, imprinted with various colours made up from a small selection of basic pigments. This month though, I found it necessary to add something to this selection of materials. When it came time to start printing, I went to my local drug store and bought a small bottle of clear nail polish. Nail polish? In a traditional Japanese woodblock print? What did I use this for?

Well, if you look closely at the print (in real life) you may be able to see. (... and no, I certainly didn't use it to 'colour' the fingernails of the poetess - she doesn't actually seem to have any!) Down at the very bottom right side of the paper, you will see that the corner of the washi is cut in a sharp and clear 90 degree right angle, taking away the 'deckle' (the natural fuzzy edge) in that area. This is of course so that the paper will fit cleanly into the registration marks that I carve on all the woodblocks. During the process of printing, this corner is carefully placed into the marks, and the colours thus appear on the paper in the correct place.

But printing is done with moist and very soft paper, and goes on for many days. No matter how carefully the printer works, little by little the sharpness of this corner of the paper becomes a bit 'dulled', and during the latter stages of printing it becomes difficult to ensure exact registration. And because many of the carved lines in the print are so fine and slender, exact registration needs exact placement of the paper into the marks.

So perhaps you can now guess why I need nail polish. After cutting the paper to the proper size, but before making it wet, I apply a small dab of the polish to that corner, and then wait for it to become hard. During the days and days of printing, the tip of the corner thus always stays sharp and strong, minimizing trouble with registration. It's still difficult to get the registration just right, but at least one of the problems is avoided.

How do you think the printers back in 'the old days' solved this problem? They of course had no such thing as nail polish to use. But they did have something that worked just as well -

urushi, Japanese lacquer. You may sometimes notice, when looking at prints in museums, a tiny smear of a dark substance on one corner of the print, and that is the lacquer, dabbed there by the printer to help ensure good registration during the print run.

I'm not quite sure just what our local druggist thinks of me. I don't go into his shop very often, but I sure buy a strange mix of products there; once a year or so I buy a small jar of camellia oil ... for lubricating the bamboo cover of my baren; now and then I buy a large jar of pure alcohol ... for mixing some of the pigments that don't dissolve in water; and now I've started buying nail polish ... Maybe he'll be expecting me to start buying lipstick next ...

I hope you enjoy this print. Two more!

October 1998

Translation: 1909 William Porter