As usual, this 'opening page' is the last part of each issue of 'Hyaku-nin Issho' to be written. The other stories are now all finished, and I see that again I have allowed the 'non-hanga' stories to take up more space than those devoted to the printmaking work. Should I expand to a four-sheet sixteen page format, and make room for more hanga stories? No, no! If I do that, I'll never get these prints finished in time, and without the printmaking work, there's no point to the newsletter, is there!

I've got to try and remember that I'm not a writer, but am supposed to be a printmaker. After the long days spent at the benches working on the prints though, it is sometimes very pleasant to sit here at the keyboard, chatting with all of you about these things that surround me. I don't have any idea if any of this is interesting for you, or even if this newsletter actually gets read, or is just tossed aside, but it's fun for me, so I suppose I'll continue ...

I hope at least some of you are finding it worthwhile. In any case, please enjoy the stories in this issue. Next time I'll try and get back on the hanga 'track' a bit better ...

With my university 'career' coming to a premature end, the 'free and easy' days were over, and what was worse, I was now thrown off the track that had led to my goal of becoming a professional flutist. The plan had been pretty clear in my mind: 'do' university, then audition for a position with an orchestra somewhere. No problem. But now ...?

I had no idea what to do next. Had I been a successful student, my parents would have done whatever they could to continue to support me, but once I dropped out, it was a different story. Their philosophy on such matters was clear: 'grown up' kids were expected to either contribute to their upkeep, or 'move on'. The most immediate challenge was to find some kind of job.

I found work easily enough, but I'm a bit embarrassed to tell you about it now ... I became an instructor for a series of night school classes in guitar playing. Flute playing? No, guitar playing. Did I play guitar? Not at all, but I certainly thought that I could stay a few steps ahead of beginner students ... And so I did. With a bit of help from a school friend who was a few steps ahead of me, I organized and taught a successful series of classes. I was then hired to do more, and for the next couple of years, until I moved away from the area, I spent a couple of evenings each week teaching people how to strum and pluck their way through folk songs ...

Teaching music, rather than playing it, became the focus of my activities for a while. A couple of years before this, my father had opened a little music shop in our small town. (His saxophone playing jobs were by and large evening engagements, so he had most days free ...) I now started helping out there, tending the counter and handling what few flute students came along, as well as doing more guitar teaching.

All this contact with guitars led me to develop a deeper interest in the instrument, and at one point I decided to build one. I found a book that gave basic information on the process, and set up a workshop in an unused room above the music store. First I built the special tools and forms that were needed, and then started on the instrument itself. It took a few months of spare time, working between lessons in the store downstairs, but I got it finished, and it was beautiful! At least I thought it was beautiful. Actually there were many problems: it was too heavy, the soundboard was too soft, the varnish was 'muddy', and I had also slightly misplaced the frets, making it a bit out of tune, but these were just 'details' - it was beautiful! And again, I'm embarrassed to tell you what came next ... I went to a local printing shop, and had them make me some of the special labels that go inside fine guitars ... "Handmade guitars by David Bull - Luthier" I think it said. I then advertised for orders ... and got them.

I can remember in considerable detail each of the instruments I built during those years. Some were for local guitar enthusiasts, who saw a chance to get a handmade instrument cheaply, and one was even ordered by a professional musician. When I met him again a decade later, he was still using it. I wonder where those 'children' of mine are now, and if they are still making music, or if they have been thrown on the junk heap ...

But what kind of behaviour was this? Just to think about being a guitar teacher ... was enough to be a guitar teacher? Just to think about being a luthier ... was to be a luthier? Was this just a phase that I was to grow out of? I don't think I'd better try answering these questions ...

Once upon a time, back when I was a very little boy, I was planning to be a jet pilot when I grew up. At some point that idea faded away (perhaps because I had to start wearing glasses) and I moved on to other dreams. I suppose, as with most children, there were many of them during the years, more than I can now remember ... but another one does stick in my mind; when I was a grade seven student, I wanted to become a librarian. I still have memories of staying after school to help the school librarian with 'chores' such as preparing catalogue cards for the new books, pasting labels in them, and then arranging them in the proper places on the shelves. Actually, I don't think it was the idea of being a librarian that attracted me so much as the idea of working in a library. All those books ... row after row of books ... Years later when I got my first 'real' job, working in a music store, this dream came partially true. One of my main tasks was organizing and maintaining order in a vast mountain of music books that crammed a warehouse in a back alley. It was the perfect job for me, and I did it very well indeed. (I did it so well that I was soon promoted to 'higher' levels in the company, where I doubt that I was quite so effective ...)

So it was then, that the preparation for this story was especially interesting for me. One day this May Sadako-san and I made a visit to the Toyo Bunko, the research library in Bunkyo-ku here in Tokyo that owns the original copy of the Shunsho 'Hyaku-nin Isshu' book that I am reproducing. We were welcomed by Mr. Isao Koyama, who has been my contact there during the years of my work on this series, and who kindly took time to give us an overview of this very interesting place.

Unlike a 'normal' library, here no books are visible when one first enters the large and mostly bare reading room containing some old, rather spartan tables and chairs. The visitors, mostly scholars and researchers, make requests to the staff for the particular items they wish to see, and these are then brought up to this room from their resting places deep within the building. As I wrote in this newsletter some years ago, when I first went to the Toyo Bunko I had not really expected to be allowed any access to their collection. I was not an 'official' scholar, I had no connections, no introduction ... just a rather scruffy bearded foreigner in jeans. But for some reason Koyama-san decided to trust me that day, and agreed to bring out the Shunsho book for my perusal. I can still remember the apprehensive look on his face as I sat down at one of the old tables and started to open it up. He must have wondered - did I know how to handle such an old book? Would I smudge the pages? Tear some of them? Was he making a big mistake?

We laughed about that during this visit. Yes, he admits that he hadn't felt so comfortable about handing me the book. This is a constant dilemma for them: finding a balance between caring for their treasures, and allowing them to be handled, studied and used. Although I as a printmaker want to touch these books, feel the soft washi under my fingers, and try and get close to the men who made them, it is Koyama-san's responsibility to see that they are passed on to future generations in the best condition possible, which means that only a minimum of physical contact can be permitted.

'His' collection is vast indeed. At present, more than 800,000 items are cared for in this building; not only Edo-era books like the ones in which I am interested, but volumes from Korea, China and indeed from every part of Asia. The Toyo Bunko was established about seventy years ago by Hisaya Iwasaki, a member of the founding family of the Mitsubishi industrial group, who had assembled a large collection of materials on Asia through purchase of various private libraries, and then set up a foundation to make them available to scholars. Since 1948, the collection has been part of the National Diet Library.

Although I had not dared to ask if it was possible, partway through our visit Koyama-san offered to take us back into the 'stacks' to get a quick glimpse at the books themselves. When we passed through the heavy door leading to the storage areas, I found that it was not at all like what I had expected. I had imagined it would be something like entering a deep dark and gloomy mine, with rows of dusty tomes stretching off into the distance ... Something like one of those old bookshops in Kanda, but multiplied a thousandfold. Would we hold a lantern aloft as we made our way along, looking behind occasionally to make sure we weren't getting lost?

Well of course it wasn't like that. It was unbelievably clean; the floors smoothly polished, the books all in absolutely straight rows on neat shelves. A bit shadowy, yes, as the lights were kept dimmed to help preserve the books, but gloomy, no. As Koyama-san led us along, it was obvious that he knows his way around these miles of stacks just as well as I know my own tiny bookshelves at home. He stopped here and there to point out various items of particular interest: a shelf of ancient prayer materials from Tibetan monasteries, a huge collection of Western books on Asia, some astonishing hand-painted picture books from the Nara era, an entire section of books written in a Mongolian language now practically 'dead', and of which their collection is the last hope for preservation ... Of course he also made sure to stop off at two rather special places in the tour; the area in which his own research is taking place, materials on Eastern architecture, and then that out-of-the-way corner of the bottom shelf of the farthest corner of the last floor, partially hidden behind boxes of books on the floor ... that place where I spied a row of familiar blue cases ... the growing collection of my own Hyaku-nin Isshu prints!

Sadako and I laughed when we saw where they were, because of course we understand that these prints are a long long way from being 'special' to the curators of this incredible collection. It will be many years yet, many centuries yet, before the day comes when scholars in the reading room upstairs will start to make requests to see these prints ... "Hmmm. Quite interesting ... Made way back in the Heisei era ... What does it say here - 'Carved and printed by David Bull' - I wonder who he was ...?" I don't know if those men will understand much about what I've done, or why I've done it, but at least they will have the chance to see my work. Thanks to this extraordinary institution, men of the future will always have these links with their past. Koyama-san and his compatriots are quite proud of this; being responsible for caring for all these important historical records, and preserving them as best they can.

All too soon our whirlwind tour was over, and regretfully I passed back into the normal world, the heavy door closing behind me, shutting off my view of those endless shelves of treasures ... Koyama-san returned to his own work, and we stepped out into the bright sunshine and started to make our way home. But as I walked away from the building, I felt a new sense of pride; that my little prints are part of the same collection as all those treasures. I don't care if they are on the bottom shelf - as long as they are part of this magnificent collection of human achievement ...

Excuse me ... you there five hundred years from now, in the year 2496, why don't you drop over to the Toyo Bunko one day. Fill out a request slip, sit down at one of the old tables (they probably won't have changed much by then!), and take a look at my prints ... And if you like them, please don't thank just me for making them, but say also a word of thanks to Koyama-san and his colleagues, for it is their dedication that allows you to reach back into the past and touch such treasures ...

I recently got a letter from a reader of this 'Hyaku-nin Issho' newsletter who thanked me for sending it, and who made some other pleasant comments, among which was: '... struck by the open way you wear your heart on your sleeve in your writing ..." I was a bit surprised to read this, because I really don't have the feeling that I am doing that. Whenever I sit down to start writing one of these little stories, one of two things happens: either I can't think of anything to say, and end up putting it away for 'later', or the words just start coming out onto the paper pretty much by themselves. I never think to myself, "OK, let's try to create such-and-such a mood with this piece ..." If these writings are turning out to be quite personal, I guess that's because my world is pretty narrow, and I usually just talk about myself ... I am most definitely not a professional writer. Today though, I am sitting down specifically to try and write about a personal matter, and I think this is going to be a difficult one to write ...

It was five years ago, in the fall of 1991, that I told you the news about my then-wife leaving Hamura to go and study at a university in Canada. Although it was an incredible upheaval for all of us here, it didn't seem right to talk about it much in 'public', so I didn't write a long story, just a short paragraph that told the bare facts of what was happening. I felt that you would pretty much understand what we were going through ...

A couple of years went by, and then in the fall of '93, another 'family' story appeared in this 'Hyaku-nin Issho' - the news that we had divorced. She would stay permanently in Canada, and I would continue to live here in Hamura with the two girls. Again, I tried not to write too much, not only because it was private pain, but because my own thoughts on what had happened were quite confused. It took me, of course, quite a long time to settle down into a stable frame of mind. Two things in particular helped me to continue during that horrible time: the printmaking work, and my children. Having a deadline to finish a new print each month was a lifesaver. No matter how upset I was, and no matter how many tears became mixed together with the pigments, I couldn't let the printmaking work lapse. But the biggest factor was the presence of Himi and Fumi. The fountain of energy and laughter that ceaselessly poured from those two forced the problems aside. I still had a family. That hadn't been destroyed. We were alive ... and happy together! Although these past few years have had their share of tough moments, we've mostly had a lot of fun, as I hope you have seen in the occasional photographs of the girls I have included in this newsletter.

Well, three more years have passed, and I find that again it is time to bring you some personal news ... Again, I'll try and keep it simple. Himi and Fumi left Japan in early April. They are now living in Vancouver with their mother and her friend.

For years their mother had been asking for this, but it was always very easy for me to refuse her request. What was not so easy to refuse were the constant demands from the girls themselves that they be allowed to go. They went to Canada for a vacation last summer, and since that time have been eagerly looking forward to going again - to live rather than just visit. I was of two minds as to how to deal with this. Part of me wanted to say to them, "Be quiet. You're still just children. I know what's best for you. You can't go." Against that though, was the ever-growing concern that I was denying them the opportunity to have a normal relationship with that other person who should also be at the centre of their lives ... their mother. Another factor was my uneasiness about the type of education that was facing them here when it would come time to leave the haven of the local elementary school and move on to middle and high school ... And of course, I would be speaking less than the truth if I didn't admit also that I needed a rest, some privacy ... and some peace ...

So after much consideration, and after receiving their mother's promise that she would settle in a stable home and put their needs ahead of her own plans, I finally agreed to their request. When they finished the school year in March, away they went (along with their cat). The goodbye at the airport was without question the worst experience of my life, but as time passes, the heartache is decreasing. After years of emotional upsets, perhaps the worst is now behind us.

It is difficult for me to guess what your reactions to this story may be. Please don't get the idea that all is 'gloom and doom' with us. Himi and Fumi are healthy, well-adjusted and happy children. Each time I speak to them on the telephone and hear their exuberant voices, I am reassured that they will grow up to be strong and confident adults. There are few places if any, on this earth that provide a better environment for developing children than does Vancouver. I miss them more than I can find any way to tell you, but I think they will be fine ...

As for me ... well you know what I'm going to say, don't you! I hang on to that one thing that has been stable in my life for so long now ... my printmaking work. The schedule slipped a bit during the months of preparation, packing and farewells, but I have been slowly getting back into the routine, and am starting to find some of that long-sought peace and quiet ... It's carving, carving and more carving, relieved by time with my records and books, and by an occasional river-side picnic with a lady I met at the pool a while ago, and who has been a wonderful support ... I'll be fine too ...

What a decade this is turning out to be for me! With two and a half years left - what further surprises yet await?

Today was a very special day. I sat in my 6-mat workroom carving woodblocks just as I do every morning, but with a special difference ... Today I felt as though my little room had been lifted into the air somehow and set down in the middle of a peaceful rural village. I was magically transported from dirty, dusty Tokyo, to a place far away in the clean countryside. To a country valley in autumn. A valley full of the scent of freshly mown grass. Yes ... today I got brand-new tatami mats in my workshop!

I have been waiting a long time for this. A woodblock printmaker's income is not very stable, and as you all know, tatami mats are quite expensive. It has been eight years since I had new ones! Eight long years ... But because it has been such a long time, perhaps the pleasure now is just that much greater. The old mats were so worn down in some places that I had patched them with tape here and there, and I felt quite embarrassed when guests came to visit. Alas, nobody visited today to help me enjoy the new mats - but perhaps someone will come tomorrow ... I know exactly what they will say as they enter the room. "Ah, ii nioi desu ne!" "What a wonderful smell!" And the two of us will sit there on the smooth, firm green surface, sipping tea, chatting about this and that, and enjoying the nostalgic feeling that seems to automatically come with fresh clean tatami.

When my family lived in Canada, we wanted to get a couple of tatami mats from Japan for our apartment. We thought that they would make a nice focus for the room, be a pleasant place to sit, and would also be a good place to spread our sleeping mattress (we didn't use a bed). Unfortunately though, we were not able to import them because of strict agricultural restrictions (I think it was concern about disease or insects in the straw). But I waited patiently, and when I arrived in Japan just over eight years ago, made sure that the apartment I rented had a 'wa shitsu', a Japanese room. Since then, I have been almost totally living on tatami. As all my work is done in that room, and of course sleeping as well, I guess I probably spend about 20 hours a day on my tatami.

So for me, the arrival of these new mats today was not only a long-awaited experience, but one to be treasured. I know that over the next few weeks and months, they will gradually lose their fresh smell, and the beautiful light green colour will slowly fade away, but for as long as it lasts, I will savour this wonderful clean 'country' feeling. And I promise myself - I won't ever wait eight years before I get new tatami again!

I wrote the stories for this issue of 'Hyaku-nin Issho' in the 'gap' between finishing the second print of the year and starting the third one. It seems to me that recent years have seen a gradual change in my way of working. I'm finding it a bit difficult to keep different projects going at the same time, but am now tending to finish off one before getting involved with another. I postponed working on the newsletter until the print was finished, even though my 'helpers' were waiting to get started on the translations. And only now that the writing is done, will I find it easier to settle down to the carving work on the next print.

When I think back to my job at the large music shop in Canada, I find it hard to believe that the David I remember from there was really me. How many different things did he do in the course of a day? He wrote letters to customers and suppliers, prepared bids for music instrument sales, answered phone calls, assigned tasks for employees, assisted music teachers looking for band music, demonstrated a flute for a prospective customer, worked on writing computer programs for the operation of the business, listened to tapes of new music and selected which to purchase ... each day was crammed with activity, and of course it was never all 'done', the desk was always still full at the end of every day ...

I suppose my friends back there are still doing all those things, and probably more, but I don't think I could ever live that way again. It was a lot of fun, and very satisfying, but I am now definitely settled into a more slow-paced way of living. Japan isn't really the best place to do that, and perhaps I'm the 'odd-man-out' here, but I don't mind that at all ... just trying to take things one at a time ...

Thanks for reading ... see you again in a few months ...