1) Scroll down this page for an introduction to this site ... or ...

2) Use the 'Table of Contents' link at lower left to discover what is here ... or ...

3) Use the blue 'Date' slider to just dive right in ...

Introduction

I am David Bull, an English-born Canadian, resident in Japan since 1986. For most of those years, I made a living as a woodblock printmaker, but I then founded Mokuhankan, a publisher of woodblock prints, which is located in Asakusa, Tokyo. That company has its own web presence; the site you are on now focusses on my personal work: the woodblock prints that I produced over the years, and many related materials such as blog posts, media coverage, and other writings.

For many years, the woodblock.com website was made up of a scattered jumble of sub-sites and pages, many dating back to the early years of the internet. I uploaded the first version of it - built for Netscape Navigator! - during the summer of 1997:

As time went by, the amount of content grew - and as web design techniques changed and evolved - the site went through a number of additions, updates and patches, stacking up on top of each other in haphazard fashion. This version of the site Front Page served quite well until recently:

But with literally thousands of content pages 'hidden' inside, the entire structure became simply too complicated to navigate, not to mention the problem of containing archaic insecure code everywhere. So in the spring of 2026, I finally gave up on trying to patch more, and began a rebuild using a completely new approach - the site you are looking at now: a single timeline that will (when complete) contain everything produced during all these decades of printmaking activity.

Notes on navigating this site

• When you are viewing a page, the two 'Category' buttons (previous arrow/next arrow), will take you to the nearest neighbouring page in that same category. If you're looking at a print, you'll move to the previous/next print; for a newsletter, it'll be the previous/next newsletter, etc. etc.
• The similar 'Timeline' buttons take you to the previous/next pages in absolute chronological order, stepping through the whole thing.
• From any internal page, if you click the blue date slider (without moving it), you will see a Table of Contents for that same year, organized by Categories.
• I ask for everybody's patience, please ... as I try and get this (massive) thing built. There are literally thousands of entries to process, and it's going to take a while.
• A note about 'mobile'. The initial build of this new site is (obviously) aimed at a desktop format. Once the structure and initial content are in place, I will turn my attention to creating a more user-friendly approach for people browsing on smaller screens.

Thank you for 'dropping by'. Scrolling through the 'Table of Contents' (always via link at lower left) is the best way to get started.