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And this, of course, is
the print with which I must end this 'Where I've
Been' section of the website. Here, all of a
sudden, is where the 'wandering around' and
indecision all come to an end. This is 'Tenchi
Tenno', the first of one hundred poets ...
I had started it soon after finishing with that
print of the lady in the bath. I had not the
slightest intention of making a series of these
poets, and in fact at that time did not even know
what 'Hyakunin Isshu' was. I simply selected
it as a design that attracted me, and that I
thought would give me a good challenge to improve
my carving and printing.
It took a long time to make, just about a year.
That's not because of any inherent difficulty in
the print, but was due to external pressures -
mostly the wooden toy business, which was going
very well indeed. I remember specificially how I
put an end to that conflict; one day that fall
(this was 1988) I sat down with a sheet of paper
and drew up a 'plus/minus' kind of analysis of each
of the two activities I was tied up with -
toymaking and printmaking. It was turning out to be
impossible to do both; I had to choose one.
(Teaching English was of course not even on the
sheet - it was impossible to quit that at
this point.)
Printmaking won. I wish I had kept that sheet of
paper, because looking back now I can't quite
understand how. The toys were selling hand over
fist, and looked like a good way to make a living,
and perhaps a very good living, but over on the
other side, I had yet to sell a single print in
Japan (nor had I even tried).
I think that the main thing that swung me over
to printmaking was the fact that if I set up as a
toymaker, I would have to start thinking about a
large workshop, hiring employees, and setting up a
sales & marketing structure, etc. etc., while
if I stayed with printmaking, it could remain a
small-scale one-man operation. I had seen the
business world, back at the music store, and I
didn't want to go that way again; the idea of
staying with a more peaceful way of doing things
was very attractive. Not to mention my infatuation
with these woodblocks, which after eight years of
frustrating efforts, had still not abated.
So I decided to fold the toy business (much to
the disappointment of the part-timer who had been
making a nice business out of selling them on
commission), and concentrated on this print. It was
finished by the end of the year, and I did the
first test printing just after New Year, while the
English school was on the year-end break.
I have written elsewhere about what happened
next, how the emperor died the same night that this
print was born, and about how people around me
responded with "Can I have one of those?" when they
saw it. The pieces of my 'puzzle' finally came
together, with a very strong theme, a wonderful set
of designs, the idea of working by subscription
only instead of single sheet sales, plenty of media
interest, and with my technical abilities
being finally ready to make prints that people
would collect. My career as an artist-printmaker
was at an end - my career as a craftsman-printmaker
was ready to begin ... with this, my 22nd print ...
The rest is history (my history,
anyway!). Although up to this point I had never
produced more than four prints in any given year, I
set a ten-year schedule of producing ten a year ...
and stuck to it. A few years later I closed the
English school (a bit too early, actually) and
became a full-time printmaker.
The series of Hyakunin Isshu prints is on
display in
another section of this website,
as are the Surimono prints which followed
them.
Thank you for reading about this 'journey' ... I
hope I haven't put you to sleep!
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