Perhaps I should call this issue of the newsletter the 'rainy season' issue rather than the 'summer' issue. As I write this, it is just the beginning of June, and I suppose it'll be pretty wet and muggy by the time you read it ... I myself don't mind the rainy season per se, but I certainly hope that this year's summer is a lot drier than the last couple of years. Am I worried about the rice crops? Well, not really. Although I usually eat rice every day, I can also enjoy bread too. What I'm more worried about are the 'kozo' for making paper, and the 'takenokawa' for covering my baren. Both these plants were greatly affected by the bad weather last year, and those of us in the printmaking world have got our fingers crossed for a good harvest this year!

I'm finally back to the 'standard' pattern of these newsletters, with both a 'visit' story and a customer profile appearing in this issue. And (if you can stand it), we also have the first installment in that personal history that I threatened you with. I hope you can find something of interest this time ...

It is an interesting coincidence that the very area where my parents grew up, and in which I was born, should have become one of the main destinations in England for travellers from Japan. The tourists come to this area to see something of the culture and landscape made famous by the 19th century writers the Bronte sisters, in such books as 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights'. I doubt that they find much of the culture and society depicted in those books still extant, but the landscape of course remains, although it now certainly seems much less forbidding than it must have been in those days.

These are the Yorkshire moors, miles and miles of windswept bare hills and steep rocky valleys, a very far cry from most people's image of a gentle and green England. It is a favorite area for country walking, and in clement weather can be truly a magnificent place, all broad vistas and wide skies. But just a generation ago, it presented a far different face than it does today. For this is the very heartland of the Industrial Revolution, the place that saw the birth of that process of industrialization that, for better and worse, has transformed the world.

Cavernous dark mills, coal mines, steam railways and canals criss-crossing the countryside, every building blackened by coal smoke ... We are all familiar with those images of this place. And it was in just that landscape that my parents grew up. They would probably be angry if I described their birthplace and early life in dreary, dark terms. To them, I am sure, it was a completely normal place, and life was not so terrible. But when I now think of their early environment, I can't help but feel a bit of a shiver ...

A tiny dark house in a brick 'terrace', one room up and one down, far smaller than even my cramped Tokyo apartment. Of course no heating system other than the fireplace, in front of which baths were taken in a tin tub of water. Toilets? Communal ones located down at the end of the row of houses. And everywhere, covering everything, smoke, smog and dust from a million coal fires, in every home and factory.

For both of my parents, the end of school days and the beginning of working life came at age 14, as it did for nearly all their contemporaries. They went to work in a clothing factory, which at the time was making uniforms for the war effort. The hours were long and hard, and most of what small pay they received was of course turned over to their parents as their contribution to household expenses. They were just a bit too young to be actively involved in the war, although my father was called up in his late teens, just as the fighting in Europe came to a close, and spent about three years in uniform.

When I think about these things, as I sit here this evening in my comfortable home after a peaceful, moderate day's work, their early life seems quite unreal to me. It is also unreal to consider that my life could have followed a very similar pattern, but not for two things: the changes that the war brought to their society, and more importantly, their desire to seek a better life than the one they saw facing them, both for themselves, and for their children.

Of course I am pleased when someone decides to become a collector of my work, but it is not often that I get that pleasure twice from the same person! Back sometime in the second year of this project I got a phone call one day from an American businessman working in Osaka, who had read about me in a newspaper, and who wanted more information. We talked for a while, I sent some sample prints, and he and his wife became subscribers. Unfortunately, before I got a chance to get to know much about them, they had to return to the States, and that seemed to be the end of our relationship. I was pleasantly surprised then late last year, to get a postcard informing me that not only were they coming back to Japan, but that this time they would be living in Fussa City, just about ten minutes by bicycle from my home here in Hamura.

I have since then had a few chances to get to know Larry and Yuki LaCoss a little bit better. I would like to try and communicate to you some sense of what type of people they are, but I think you may misunderstand me. If I describe them as a couple who are out to enjoy themselves during their time on this earth, you might imagine that they are a couple of wild partygoers! But Larry and Yuki are straight-forward business people, busy with any number of business, social and community activities. It is simply that they have a philosophy of living that tells them, "This world is a wonderful, beautiful place, and it is every person's responsibility not only to enjoy his own life, but to contribute as much as he can to society as a whole." Each time I come away from their company, I feel like I have been given a boost - an emotional 'pick-me-up'. Their enthusiasm for everything is infectious. In the short time I have known them, I have had a glimpse of the wide range of their interests: travelling around America in a motorhome and on a motorbike, preparing to do the same in Japan, singing in a barbershop quartet, collecting the work of 'deserving' young artists, taking paintbrush in hand to create his own works (Larry), collecting jewellery (Yuki) ... and all the while the both of them being totally immersed in their business activities.

They have been successful in these activities, and this has allowed them to act on another facet of their life philosophy - the feeling that they must 'return a share to the community.' They do this partly through support of projects like mine, and partly through support of the activities of their church. When I first heard Larry speak of his religion, I must admit to feeling somewhat nervous, because Christians can sometimes be quite tiresome prosyletizers of their faith, but Larry does no such thing. On the contrary, this example of a man whose religion is such an obvious source of personal strength and joy stands as a far better 'advertisement' than any outright preaching would be ...

I hope I can spend more time with these two interesting people, and perhaps one good demonstration of how they are able to make people feel comfortable in their company is the way I spoke when leaving their home on a recent visit. I didn't even think of thanking them for being my customer and buying my prints. I simply said something like, "See you later ..." Larry and Yuki are not 'customers'. They are friends. I wish that all of you could spend time with them. Your life would be the richer for it ...

I was looking forward to my visit this time, out gathering information for my 'Hyaku-nin Issho' newsletter, because it took me to my favourite part of Tokyo, an area to which I return time and time again, whenever I have a chance. No, not Asakusa, where many of the woodblock craftsmen live and work, although of course I also love going there, but this time to the Kanda and Jimbocho district. It's that stretch of Yasukuni-dori from Kudanshita along to Ogawamachi that is the magnet for me ... the dozens and dozens of second-hand bookshops all in a long row. Usually, once I get started browsing through these shops, I can pretty much forget about getting anything else done for the rest of the day, but this time, when I came out from the Jimbocho subway station and headed eastwards, I had to steel myself to walk right by all the beckoning mountains of books. Today's mission was different, a visit to the shop of Mr. Kazuyuki Matsuyoshi, dealer in pigments of every description, and the place where I obtain the ganryo, the colours with which I make my prints.

Not too long ago, I would have found his store in an old brown wooden building, but the pressure from the real estate developers put an end to that, and the shop now occupies the ground floor space in a tall modern building. Similar steel and concrete buildings crowd around on both sides, as the old wooden buildings of this block, which narrowly escaped the fires during the war, have all since fallen to less dramatic, but just as effective, forms of destruction. But once inside the shop, such thoughts become irrelevant, as one is surrounded by shelf after shelf, row upon row, of jars of coloured pigments ... stacked from floor to ceiling, up far higher than I can reach. You would like some green pigment? On a few shelves just inside the door stand 92 jars of green, each one different from its neighbour. How about some yellow? More than 50 choices. What about some white? What choice can there be for white? But here I see more than four dozen different white shades standing ready for your choice! And these are all just one particular type of pigment. Similar selection of other types surround on every side. Here on Mr. Matsuyoshi's shelves, and down in his storerooms, are hundreds and thousands of different pigments, made from materials from all parts of the world, waiting for use by all types of artists.

The shop has been here for about 60 years, and was set up by Mr. Matsuyoshi's father, originally as an offshoot of a family business in Kyoto. I had guessed that it would have been a desire to be near artists and book publishers that led him to choose this area for his business, but it seems that this was not the case. Rather it was the proximity to businesses involved in making clothing, who needed various dyes and pigments, and who were once common in this area, that dictated the choice. Times have changed though, and Mr. Matsuyoshi's clientele is no longer purely 'local' in scope. It now includes not only people working with fabric dyeing, but woodblock printmakers like myself, 'kamban' (sign) designers, and of course the Japanese 'nihonga' painters for whom those 92 jars of green are waiting ... His customers are found all over Japan, and the shop even makes some shipments overseas, although Matsuyoshi-san admits that unless he improves his English, this will necessarily remain a minor part of his business ...

There have been some exciting times. Matsuyoshi-san was only a young boy, and thus shipped out to the countryside during the wartime years, but he certainly remembers the time about fifteen years ago when they had a disastrous fire in their storehouse. He has vivid memories of the firemen coming out of the building in their 'new' multi-coloured uniforms. Spraying water over mountains of coloured pigments may seem funny in retrospect, but the clouds of smoke coming from burning toxic materials was probably anything but funny at the time ...

Most of the products in the shop are now sold in a prepared 'ready-to-use' form, but a small row of jars across the top of a cabinet gives testimony as to how the business has changed down the years. In these jars is a collection of some of the raw materials from which various traditional colours are made: flower petals, seeds, cones, etc. Reading the labels ('benibana', 'yamamomo', 'yashiyadama', 'ukon' ...) brings up memories of a vocabulary not often heard nowadays ... as the dust on the jars can testify. But I should not leave the impression that this is a dessicated old shop. During the couple of hours that I sit chatting with Mr. Matsuyoshi, the telephone and fax work continuously. His assistants wrap and pack a number of large boxes to be shipped out, and there is a general hum of activity.

I am not a very good customer of this shop, as I don't make very many prints, and each small packet of inexpensive pigment that I buy lasts me for years on end, but hopefully most of his clients are more productive than I, and his business will be able to survive well into the future. I certainly hope so, because it is an important link in the chain of craftsmen and suppliers without whom I could not continue my work. But of course, I shouldn't say that, because all of those links are vital, none more important than any another. If any one of them were to break, the entire process of making my prints would come to a halt. Matsuyoshi-san, thank you for keeping up your business when all around you are giving up and selling out to those giant sports shops that are taking over your district. I promise to try and get my nose out of the bookshops, and come and visit a bit more often!

I see that this issue also, just like the last few, has somehow expanded to 12 pages instead of the 8 that I planned. I think that what this really means is that I need a strong editor leaning over my shoulder to keep my wordiness in check. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much on my own with these things, but I'll try to keep it from expanding any more. No sense in cutting down more trees than necessary ...