It is one of my favorite quotes, from a former president of Misuzu Books. One of the secretaries had complained about the old building they were all working in. It was his answer.
Sitting in my dirty broken down studio with some visitors last spring I was a little taken back looking around, wondering what they must have thought of the place. I have had a remarkable string of famous people and millionaires lately - the paper on the fusuma was all broken, the tatami is from the early Showa era, rubbed clean through in places.
They can not know how important is my squalor - if I had nice clean tatami I would spend half my energy not spilling ink on it. If the fusuma were new I wouldn't pin works in progress to it for drying.
It is not a showroom, but a working studio.
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