brushink

Fuji mi zaka The last Fuji View

2012-02-02T09:31:00.000+09:00

I had an exhibition some years ago called Blue Fuji that was made when our view of Fuji was cut in half. There is a lot of fuss this year in my part of town as it turns out we host the last "Fuji Mi Zaka" in Tokyo with an actual Fuji view. There are places all over town called, "Fuji Mi... this and that. But they are all a lie as there are no longer views in these places to support them.

We are the last one and this year we too will become a lie. A building is going up to block our view too. Fuji-San was once a living god in Japan. In my neighborhood the older folks, some of them, still pause and bow at the top of Fuji-Mi-Zaka. Perhaps next year the still will. But there will be no Fuji for them to view.

Fuji-San was a god, but now it seems completely replaced by the more contemporary deity - cash. Bigger, taller, cheaper, faster. It is an international god these days. But somehow I can not see the people of Prague allowing development that would destroy the equivalent of their last Fuji view. In Ottawa, the Canadian capital city, no construction is allowed to obstruct the view of the Parliament building and the Peace Tower.

Red Fuji Back

Some people in Tokyo take a more modern view and pint out that there are still plenty of nice Fuji views up in the new tall buildings, for people that can afforded them. Who would expect lowly people walking on the ground to enjoy such a privilege in these capital days?

my next exhibition

2012-02-01T10:47:00.000+09:00

Yesterday we decided. I will have an exhibition in about 40 day at Gallery CN in Fujisawa, Japan. http://gallery-cn.sakura.ne.jp/about.english.html

Noah built his arc in 40 days and gathered all the animals too. Making an exhibition should be a snap.

It is will open on the one year anniversary of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, baring acts of nature or god to prevent it.

The working title is Sun, Water and Wind.

kids teaching

2012-01-29T11:02:00.001+09:00

Yesterday I did a workshop at one of my universities, teaching very young children to paint with sumi ink. It was an introduction to the medium. For most it was a first chance to experience ink, and washi. What is the smell of sumi ink? How does it move on the paper? How does ink feel? How does it taste? Of course they taught me many things.

One kid tired of using the rolled paper brush he was given and started painting with the big old rock that was supposed to be his paper weight. My first time to see someone paint with a rock. Kids are unique in our modern era of specialization. They are scientists discovering the world, and natural artist sharing their vision with the world. They are little Divincis walking among us.

Of course it did not take long for some to abandon other tools for the more basic hands and feet.

One judge of success, every painting was different, as the individual person that creating it.

great leap forward

2011-12-06T08:49:00.000+09:00

Today I have a day in the studio. My first etching sprint is done. I got the machine about a month ago I think, and set it up on my main downstairs working table, the table I use for making scrolls and frames and even banjos. The press had the table for a month. Last weekend I had precious little time, teaching all day Saturday and everybody coming at me on Sunday, art buyers, friends and family knocking on doors, creeping around the windows, scratching at the sides of the house. But I muscled out one last print, as I knew it was the end of my sprint, my first burst of etching energy. Now today I must change the room over to other things, year end paper working and the like. It is time to pick things up, put them into some form of order, in boxes, jars, and the like.

I will still be able to etch, but in moderation, not letting it take over the whole studio as it has been for a month. It is the end of my first great leap forward. Got half a dozen, maybe a dozen if you count all, more than that with all the wrong turns and and dopey starts, and maybe 2 or 3 good ones.

occupy

2011-12-03T09:35:00.000+09:00

I was surprised to see the occupy tent in Kasumi-gaseki, right on the corner of the METI building.

They looked like serious people. Most signs in Japanese. One in English that caught my eye about Urban Elitism, sacrificing the rural areas for the cities. It must be pretty frustration in the countryside these days, especially up in Tohoku, blasted by a terrible Tsunami and then and still peppered with radioactive poison that will stay 2oo plus years. In a way it is worse that the old Roman trick of destroying a chit and then salting the land.

Folks in Tokyo will be enjoying a string of Bon-en-kai, Year end parties. Up in Tohoku I expect it will not be a cheery this dark season.

I found the Occupy movement in Japan have a facebook page in addition to a web site.

New Toy

2011-11-04T09:02:00.000+09:00

Exhibitions punctuate my year, make a break and give me a chance for a new start. This year after my exhibition finished I went to Jimbocho and bought an etching press. I have not used one for over 20 years. I am looking forward to remembering and to figuring out some new stuff.

Black Ships Mandala and other paintings

2011-10-25T23:13:00.000+09:00

Wow, three weekends went fast. Thanks all who visited, and if you missed the show, here is a bad video if it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XYeZnj0yPg

Saturday Night

2011-10-22T19:11:00.000+09:00

One more day of my exhibition and I can change the space back into a studio and get back to painting. Thought in the time off I have a couple new ideas I want to play around with.

First day

2011-10-09T08:24:00.000+09:00

The end of the first day of my exhibition

Exhibition Starts today!

2011-10-08T08:41:00.000+09:00

This year's exhibition starts today. This year galleries in Yanaka will be serving tea. Actually I always have tea, but it is a theme this year and different galleries are trying to out do each other with tea. I wanted to serve Yomugi tea, but it is getting hard to find. We will start slowly on the tea. Who knows what the coming days will bring?

Details on homepage, brushink.com

October Exhibition

2011-10-04T21:55:00.002+09:00

before

The clean-up has ended, and the exhibition is almost ready. Opens Saturday, all are welcome.

after

save the Hanezawa garden

2011-09-17T10:50:00.000+09:00

It is a historic site, built just after the great earthquake, lots of history and beauty. Soon it will be another ugly apartment building in Hiro.

http://savehanezawagarden.blogspot.com/2007/08/save-hanezawa-garden-first-post.html

Ink Painting Classes begin!

2011-09-12T22:02:00.001+09:00

We did not know if we would have enough students with the earthquake and the radiation and all, but we have 3 NZlanders and 1 Amer. For the first time the class was held at my studio.. Next class will probably shift to the international house again.

radioactive rice

2011-09-06T08:46:00.000+09:00

The rice down wind of the Fukushima disasters is growing nicely. My students asked me where this rice will be going. Who will be eating it? I have not found one person that trusts the food supply in Japan, inside or outside of the country.

It is shocking what a modern developed country with a very powerful government will do. And what they will not do.

I read today that Fukushima rice is shipped and is in Tokyo stores and the government says it is OK.

Geisai

2011-09-01T21:19:00.000+09:00

Friday morning at 10 AM the mikoshi come out, led by the Samba band, Ueno Park, National Arts U.

I wonder what will be the flavor of the festival this year. For the last few years it has been a bit of a slide, Tamabi too - too tame, kids are doing what the teachers say. What's with that?

An important part of the festival used to be the Anarchy, Who can say, it may return.

kids at Tokyo Geidai

2011-08-24T23:02:00.000+09:00

Kids at Tokyo Geidai are getting thier Mikoshi ready. Geisai in a couple of weeks!

semi and the end

2011-08-17T09:26:00.000+09:00

Last evening riding beside the Shinobazu Pond in Ueno the cicada screams were reaching a crescendo, with a desperation that recognizes that summer will soon be gone.

frames

2011-08-13T09:04:00.000+09:00

Plenty hot in Tokyo.

But soon it will be October and time for the next exhibition, so I have begun making frames.

I run the fan and try to not drip sweat on the wood. To that end have adopted the Japanese technique of wearing a towel around my neck, and picked up some new ones at the 100 yen store.

Tenshin Tea Tray

2011-08-07T12:28:00.000+09:00

Nearly done. I found a photo of his six sided house in Ibaragi that sadly and shockingly looks more like my tea tray than its former self.

Okakura Tenshin's six sided house in Ibaragi after the March 11 Tsunami

my new tea tray, nearly done sanding in Yanaka

Tenhsin Tray

2011-08-06T21:32:00.000+09:00

Probably you heard that Okakura Tansin's six sider up in Ibaragi washed away last March. I have been working on a tray to use in a tea ceremony I plan to put on to celebrate him this October.

Watermelon days

2011-08-01T10:34:00.000+09:00

Up on the hill we were smacking the watermelons around, then some fireworks. Summer is really here.

hot and huumid

2011-06-27T22:06:00.000+09:00

Hard weather is beginning in Tokyo. I started to paint on the train, where it is still air conditioned. But with Tokyo Power on a thread thanks to our nuclear dependancy, it is hard to say how long even the trains will last.

Train Mandala

October Exhibition

2011-06-07T22:16:00.000+09:00

Got to choose a painting for the postcard and for images on guide maps etc..

Picasso said, "All art is a lie in search of the truth."

Balthus said, "Painting is a language not easily translated into another."

I say, "People that wish to sell their art make up stories to connect their visual language to the audience's more oral tradition."

Anyway I have to put stuff into a sort of order and put a story to it. This year I am thinking of using a drawing, a colored drawing for my selling image.

Black Ship Skip Mandala

Yarn Bombing

2011-06-05T10:04:00.000+09:00

It seems that the Japanese have been yarn bombing for some time, even before it has become recently popular.

Funny first week of rainy season this year, almost rain, then bitter cold rain then a nice weekend.

Fukushima artist

2011-06-01T21:55:00.001+09:00

There is a very interesting instillation in gallery Higure in Yanaka, on the cross street, near the bottom of the Yanaka Ginza steps. It is moving instillation and if you happen to be walking around Yanaka it is worth a visit. till the 16th

knives

2011-05-28T17:59:00.000+09:00

If you poke around the kitchen in an old Japanese house you will probably find the knives that no one uses but are too good to throw out. They may already be red with rust. They are made with good carbon steel. They will take an edge better than any stainless steel thing made. And they are genus in their construction and their design. One wide bladed square ender for vegetables, one shorter, with a point, thick thick steel for popping the heads off of fish, and cleaning them out, and a long slender pointed blade for thin slicing sushi. These knives evolved with Japanese cooking, and like so many old things Japanese are simply perfect, but also ferociously labor intensive.

You can not just pick these knives up and use them. It takes practice and study They also take care, to keep them from rusting, and to keep them razor sharp. This is probably the reason that they are still in the old kitchens, and the reason they are rusting away as no one in the family uses them. People use western styled stainless blades that work OK, not nearly as well, or as sharp, but OK. I even see sushi chiefs using western styled knives these days.

I have found a few great blades in old junk shops for almost nothing, and am trying to fix them up for use. The one below rotted the steel out of the handle. The blade is great, but it is a bit of a challenge to figure a way to get a handle on it.

Energy Shift Parad, Yoyogi-shibuya-Omotesando

2011-04-26T18:50:00.000+09:00

The march Sunday was very Japanese. it was organized by Greenpeace among others.

It was for and called, "Energy Switch" - A bit of Japanese English that was supposed to say. "Hey, we are not against anything, we just kind of think it would be a good idea to consider a switch to safer energy sources." Which is a Japanese way to say, "Shut down the fucking nukes, now!"

It was well attended, and in a Japanese style organized, divided into 7 groups of about 1000 each, mothers and children first, A group with lots of banners after that. I was in group number 6 don't know what our theme was supposed to be. Behind us were people with instruments that can not play them well enough to actually entertain anyone, but are still capable of making some noise. I would have been there had I brought a banjo.

Each group was whisked through a very busy part of town surrounded by cops and so divided that we did not see any of the other groups beginning to end. After I realized it was sort of like a Matsuri, Japanese festival, the way they organize the mikoshi, portable shrines.

It was a long time getting started and waiting, standing in our divided groups in the NHK parking lot. We were over 7 thousand strong, but looked pretty weak when compared with the throng of people shopping in Shibuya and Omotesando that day.

When I was most beautiful

2011-04-13T10:39:00.000+09:00

When I was most beautiful,
Cities were falling
And from unexpected places
Blue sky was seen.
When I was most beautiful,
People around me were killed.
And for paint and powder
I lost the chance.

Noriko Ibaragi (1957)

The above is part of a poem that Pete Seeger used to make a song some years ago. It was about the end of the second world war, but I kept humming it during one pf my schools graduation this year. Students were not allowed to wear pretty Kimono this year because of the earthquake/tsunami.

A lot of the past seems to be reflected in the current troubles. I feel like visiting the Luck Dragon again. It was interesting to restudy that incident that was the motivation behind that Japanese, then the world, Ban the Bomb movement, fighting above ground testing and the movie Godzilla.

Not the big one yet

2011-04-05T10:16:00.000+09:00

A friend in Yokohama asked me about my earthquake experience, after 3 weeks I feel about what I felt those first few seconds of the shake. It was kind of big, but for Tokyo not the big one at all. Just a very smooth shake. Tohoku of course got their big one.

I was in Maruzen bookstore. No books fell. In my studio (my Taisho built old wooden studio) my banjo was still leaning against the wall where I left it. Pretty smooth shake.

I put a link to William Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech up on my facebook yesterday. It seems particularly appropriate to Japan, especially to the Tokyo area. He was talking about fear of the bomb in 1950, but I think it is a lot of that pent up residual fear we see folks wallowing in here today. Also we are being plagued but "the peaceful atom" a scam by the defense industry to make people more accepting of nuclear weapons. Or perhaps just a by product there of, like the modern fertilizer industry after the WW2 bomb factories were looking what to do with their massive production of nitrogen.

So it goes.

But none the less a sunny day.

Faulkner's speech -
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html

Terrorist Group

2011-04-03T09:02:00.000+09:00

I was in Tokyo in 1995 when the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult bombed the subway here with sarin gas. People were killed. I was also in Tokyo watching TV when the religious Saudis ran commercial airlines into the World Trade Center in New York, where I used to live.

In spite of witnessing these two events I have to say that the Tokyo Electric Power Company, (TEPCO) is the most successful terrorist organization I have yet encountered in my 50 plus years on earth. I do not believe it was TEPCO's purpose to spread terror. But I do believe they have done it far better that any other group to date.

Fear of Food

2011-03-31T10:09:00.001+09:00

The things up north promise to be a lot of trouble and heart ache for a long while, but will get better day by day. Japanese are type A people and will peck away at it and make it right. Thought they have not seemed to be able to do the same politically yet.

Ginza sans neon

Ironically, things in Tokyo for me have been better than usual, probably because I have been mostly on vacation. But in reality many changes are good changes. People wasting less electricity, less cars on the roads, shorter lines at the movies. Ginza all dark, but the pizza ovens are still gas fired and the pizza is better than 90% of the stuff you get in NY, thought my kids prefer a big slab of tomato cheese and dough and that's it.

For me it is mostly good. It is a little like my feeling of the US housing crisis. I would feel differently if my life savings were tied up in a house that went to shit. But I like cheaper houses. I think houses are for people to live in and not to pay the bank 1/3 of your income over 20 years - the cheaper the better. I know there are a lot of economic shocks involved. But they were too damned expensive and prices should fall.

One bad thing in Tokyo now is fear of food. People hoard and people fear. People are afraid of the water, of spinach, all greens really, soon it will be the meat and fish. And not unreasonable fear. Real answers about food safety are hard to get. The government will sometimes talk about iodine, but cesium is not mentioned. We know it is there but where and how much?

No one trusts the government to protect or even monitor the food supply, so we run on rumor and fear. This is the country that came up with Minamata Disease, the poisoning of a whole population of people with mercury to protect the industries involved.

Tokyo announced the levels of Iodine in the water when it went over the legal limit, since then no numbers released, "Safe" safe by 1% point, safe by a mile?

And again, when they announced iodine levels Cesium was not mentioned. Cesium imitates potassium, your body takes it in and it never leaves. It stays radioactive for 200 years, as opposed to iodine which is gone in a month.

I did notice at the National Ministry yesterday they had a cop out front on the sidewalk with that scary big stick they hold while on guard, and inside a cop with a gun, both firsts in my 20 years working in the ministry. This Ministry is in charge of Nuclear safety and information. I guess they think some one may have cause to be unhappy with them now.

Life goes on. We will watch the vegetables, milk, fish and water, though how one does that I do not yet know.

A muddle

2011-03-27T13:43:00.002+09:00

My life continues to be a muddle. Yesterday I accomplish very little. All this earthquakeing has thrown me off direction. I managed to clean up a part of a hall way I had piled high with papers and notebooks, old lessons and test results for the last couple of years anyway. Found some treasures I apparently don't really need not having seen them for over a year and not missing them.

Guilty

2011-03-25T11:44:00.000+09:00

I had a an interesting time in the pub last night, connecting with friends returning to Tokyo, getting tired of the scare, and feeling intensely guilty about running away. I do not think there is anyone here that would blame anyone for voluntary evacuations . We all felt like it more than once. I sent my family away and almost went with them.

But I think there is an intense feeling of guilt, not necessarily from embassy or company workers that just come here for their 3 year tour living in the foreign compounds, complaining that their gardens are not big enough, but from residents, Japanese and foreign that left. No one blames them. We all were pretty scared.

And as I said at the time, if a big wave is coming at me I will always run up hill. It was just so hard to measure or judge the nature and depth of the danger in Tokyo. You can't blame people for trying to protect themselves and families, and I don't think anyone does. But people that leave seem to take on intense feelings of guilt.

I feel guilty complaining about Tokyo when I think of the horror people in the North have and are continuing to go through.

Humans are funny animals.

part of my letter to a friend in New York today

2011-03-24T10:59:00.000+09:00

The slow steady drumbeat of gloom and doom goes on in Tokyo and will continue for a while. I got some real good news in that front yesterday from NPR. They said that the radiation so far emitted is overwhelmingly radioactive Iodine. Which means, as they said in the article, even the effected area will be about the same radiation readings as Denver Colorado in a month or two.

That is if they can get the 6 nuclear plants in Fukushima under control which is not yet a done deal, and which were spewing out more shit yesterday,

Foreign press headlines are terrifying (selling papers). Japanese press is reassuring (a government tool). But places like the Scientific American on line magazine are very helpful explaining what this stuff really means. So few people have a science background. My kids, though educated for tests here have no idea about radiation or nuclear energy.

Anyway, things in Tokyo are not so bad as they sound. Though there was a shocking development yesterday. There seems to be a beer shortage.

The Japanese personality if funny. No riots. Not complaints really. People are kinder and more civil in the street and in lines, sometimes long lines. But they are hoarders. One minute the stores are full of beer, I mean full to the top. Then word of a shortage, shelves are empty in minutes. Japanese are hoarders.

Maybe it is in the social DNA from generations of oppression by the ruling classes, from floods, fires, wars, and quakes. Remember in the 7 Samurai movie, the farmers eating mullet, ready to starve, but under their floors, rice, sake, swords and treasure.

Too bad about America in terrible debt, but still being the cops of the world. It is an addiction, as you and Eisenhower have both said. A hard habit to break. Will the American people ever get wise to it and complain? Will the Japanese get wise and stop electing the same money eating, nuke building fools? I wish I could say I was optimistic.

Anyway I have no plans to leave. Though it might be a good chance to get Yuki out, get her going on a new direction in America, though I am afraid she wold not go without Sumi and Sumi has a brand now school she worked so hard to get in about to start, first gathering tomorrow.

We are drinking bottled water, staying away from milk and spinach for a while. But it will get better soon, or it will get a whole lot worse, depending upon the nukes and the fools and heroes trying to cool them. Time will tell.

And a friend lent me The Thin Man films from the 30's and 40's, great fun, though all 5 are about the same movie.

an e-mail from Germany

2011-03-22T11:31:00.001+09:00

It was nice to get an e-mail from a friend in Germany this morning.

It was nice to hear of two generations there protesting together against nuclear energy. With global warming nuclear energy was about to be popular again. As she said there are also political reasons, American companies and America trying to help it's trade balance (GE and Westinghouse make lots of the nuclear plants here). And it is big money for construction and for politicians and probably for local governments too.

But now they see the price. There will be a 30 or 50 Km dead zone for 200 years in Fukushima I think. It is horrible but it is good timing to remind people that nuclear energy is very safe until it isn't safe. Such powerful poisons are created, and so long lasting.

Poor people have to leave their homes. Farmers loose their farms and their way of life. I wonder how much of this radioactive cesium and iodine is going to appear in fish. And fish can swim. They so not stay in Fukushima. They do not stay in Japan.

Japanese people are better about trusting the government, or anyway they are not so good about changing it. Maybe these troubles will change Japan. But I am not optimistic.

Tokyo water is safe, it comes from a different direction. Probably food will be OK. But I wonder how much they will start to screen for radiation in fruit, vegetable, milk and meat markets and Tsukiji. America has wonderful radiation detectors from worry about Terror. I do not know if Japan wants to use them. It has always been a problem. The top government protects itself and treats Japanese people like animals.

The constant drum beat of fear

2011-03-21T20:01:00.000+09:00

Lots of new panics around town, all seem trivial and rumor, but it got to the U.S. State Department. They are evacuating families from the American Embassy in Tokyo which set off teh army to do the same, voluntary relocation they call it on the army news. Things like this do not make anyone feel more comfortable.

And the contamination stories have started, spinach, milk, now even the Tokyo water. We are well outside the evacuation area so I expect short of a giant blasting meltdown (which could still happen, but I doubt.) We are fine. I think the Japanese government is starting to restricted vegetables etc. from the evacuation area (morons, why would they think it was OK to sell irradiated food from the evacuation area in the first place). The local market guy said to expect a shortage of vegetables, which is fine with me as long as they are not sell the hot ones anymore.

I expect such news and stories to continue like a low constant drum beat for months if not years. I still think it will be safe enough, but high stress and less than all the time convenient. And it is a distraction fom the people who really need our attention up north.

What's it about?

2011-03-20T09:29:00.003+09:00

I hear people are getting sick in the states overdosing on iodine tablets.
A few days ago it was about panic. Today it is about heroes: Dave fast on his motorcycle when most of us were still shaking in town, going up to dig for his good friend's family in the north. Dr. S who says to me, "Oh, we are OK. Really, Tokyo is OK, But if it comes to the worst with the nukes, you can take your family to my little cabin in the mountains. I and my wife have decided, we will go to the affected area to help."

There is a town in Saitama who relocated a little town whole from the evacuation zone, to keep friends and neighbors intact.

There is a great rice pot that at one time was used by a Yanaka temple to feed people in need. Now is a decoration used to catch rain water. We pray now that our priests will step up and be heroes again too.

Poetry

2011-03-20T09:02:00.002+09:00

"Poetry is for people who fly in their dreams," from a Russian poet on the BBC today.

nearly a full moon

2011-03-19T10:47:00.003+09:00

It was a very pleasant night. Talking about books and playing a little music with a friend.

It seems important in these tragic times to continue to live and enjoy life.

end of the world as we know it

2011-03-18T22:30:00.001+09:00

I have see all those new action/adventure movies, shouting, shooting, stabbing and such. Why is it I at a time like this I fall back on the old ones, Rick and his gal in Paris drinking the last of the champagne.

Just the Brits and the Japanese in the pub tonight. Everybody else went home.

Heroes

2011-03-17T21:58:00.000+09:00

I don't know if you can see the little gold people in this painting. They are some of our heroes. This has been a terrible natural disaster and man made disaster. Many heroes have been consumed.

Fear Itself

2011-03-17T11:27:00.001+09:00

It does bring to mind when the people of Westchester, all around my sister's house, were putting plastic over their windows and doors to save themselves from poison gas attacks after the World Trade Centers were destroyed.

at the end of the line

It is hard to be in the center of fear. People watching news overseas are full, full of panic. Foreigners in Japan also. I went to the Tokyo Immigration office yesterday. The line of foreigners who wanted to get re-entry permits were around the block, and around the next block. People do not have faith in the Japanese government to handle a crisis. And we do not trust that we are being told the truth. Untrue, slow, and unclear information makes a perfect place for panic.

Hard to make a rational decision about how to take care of yourself and your family in this situation.

All this feels selfish and callous when hearing the sad stories of people in the tsunami.

It is a perfect storm of stress and trouble. And all of this on a sunny day in Tokyo, a really nice day. An otherwise perfect day to enjoy another day of life.

Nuclear Panic

2011-03-15T19:29:00.000+09:00

Today's painting, Fukushima Daiichi

People are prone to panic with new technologies. No one complains when 10,000 people died coal mining. last year in China, or about the real increase in deaths from lung disease from surfer dioxide and other particulates the coal burning plants kick out.

But if there is a tiny leak that isn't actually dangerous to public health and people pull out their hair an howl.

I do not mean to that say I am pro-nuclear energy, or weapons. I am not.

I am just saying people panic, and dangers are most often overblown.

All that being said, today I reached my tipping point today. I am afraid.

I do not think Tokyo is about to to be consumed in a fireball of hell, but for the first time I start to fear that there is a real possibility that we will be exposed to radioactive cesium and Iodine, and god help us, something worse. From what the NY Times says they are really in deep trouble up in Fukushima. they have had multiple meltdowns of fuel rods, and it looks like one breach of a containment tank. It is possible that it will soon be too dangerous for anyone to be in or near the nuclear sites to continue trying these last ditch efforts to contain the problem. What then?

Real Bad.

The wind mostly keeps blowing it all toward California, but it did shift once today for a few hours. Tokyo radiation levels went up 20 times normal. Not dangerous, but it does give an indication what could happen if all hell breaks loose up there and then the wind changes and blows towards us again.

It then becomes the worst case.

Short time should tell, in the next 3 days or so. But so far every bit of news from up there has been bad. It could get worse fast.

What should I do? I have kids here. Worse than that about 10 million people have kids here.

How selfish are we?

2011-03-14T10:25:00.003+09:00

When the first big shake happened I was in a bookstore in Nohonbashi. It started small and was not a surprise, but at some point I realized it was pretty big and worse than usual. I also noticed that it was slow and rolling, so it meant that the center of the quake was far away. But at the same time it was terrible big for a slow roller. My next thought was, “god help the people at the center of this.”

It is not a selfish thought. But it was not followed up. I was truly concerned about people at the center, but what could I do? I was in a bookstore shaking. After that I also did nothing. Not easy to help from here and not easy or reasonable to go there. I would just be in the way.

It is easier to worry about helping a person in my family, or living next door, or very near. A person in front of my house. But people in a tsunami in Bangladesh? Folks in the middle of tribal war in and African country? Rebels fighting in Libya? I am concerned for all, but basically do not help. When in our sorry earth is there not a disaster happening somewhere?

There is some hope and expectation that governments that I directly support with my money will give assistance. But I do not help. Maybe I will give a little extra money, donate clothes, or an old blanket, not complain when the power company blacks my house out for a few hours to save power. OK.

Mostly, people in these situations have to suffer. They have to help themselves. And professionals have to help.

Selfish?

Here is my selfish worry. This last earthquake was terrible for the people living northeast of here. Horrible. Many people lost their lives, or had homes, whole ways of life destroyed in a wave, in a minute. Horrible, sad. But on a national scale, Japan can handle it. Aid will get there. Professionals and local volunteers will be pulling people out of rubble rescuing them from house tops. Water will get through, food, blankets. People will have to sit in cold community centers, eating cold rice balls. Not happy, not easy, but help really is on the way.

What about Tokyo?

If this kind of a thing, rather, When this kind of a quake does hit Tokyo – Who will come? Who will help?

Tokyo is the center, communications, government, roads, trains, airports - 12 million people, more! When the tsunami is rolling up through Nihonbashi, Ginza, Kasumigaseki, up here as far as Ueno mountain, when the landfill much of this town is built upon liquefies, when the giant gas tanks catch fire and the fires rolls like an express train through the low lands, which is most of Tokyo.

Who will come to help?

I can’t imagine the scale of it. Who can?

cell phone warning of a quake already in progress

It is why bread is sold out at the local store today, people buying as many bags of rice as they can carry, flashlights are all sold out.

It is why people in Tokyo walk so softly this morning, as if they were afraid of setting off the big one with a heavy step.

It won’t come this week, or next. It will not come when we are all looking. But everybody knows, every scientist, every kid in school, knows it will come, and sooner rather than later.

Who will come to help us then?

What to do?

People outside think we should all get on a plane. "I will send you money. Fly out!"

Japanese do not think of this. It is their home. Where would they go? Why?
I have lived here in Japan over 20 years. I guess it is also my home now. I do not think about getting on a plane and flying away.

It is pretty dangerous here too. Have 20, 000 people died this week in the quakes and tsunami? Probably more.

How many people died in the World Trade Center? I know two of my friends did. How many people died from gun accidents and gun crime in America this year? How many people in cars?

Yesterday's Earthquake

2011-03-12T12:47:00.000+09:00

Up north they got the real trouble. So terrible.

Mine is just another little story.

I was just coming out of Tokyo station when the second quakes were hitting. The little building across the street had the 4th floor glass out and already tumbled to the street. People trying to evacuate, but glass still falling, ladies screaming running holding their heads, me in the center of the street watching the tall buildings bending and swaying like rubber, wondering if this was going to be the big one, streets to narrow to escape in that part of town.

Quite a few moments for reflection.

Luckily only some small glass from some older building broke. Funny how it only popped the glass in the middle floors.

Then a 2 hour walk home with the rest of Tokyo all on the sidewalks, every one using a cell phone, or trying to. I stopped for ice cream half way.

Someone had tried to take my bicycle in Nippori where I had left it, but only managed to drag it around the corner to a darker spot and bend the lock a little. I worry about Japanese sometimes. A New Yorker would have had that lock snapped off in seconds.

I stopped in the local pub for a pint. they reported only one bottle of gin as breakage. Good botle though.

It has been shaking off and on all night and now today. Sometimes I wonder if it just me shaking.

Yap

2011-03-10T08:59:00.000+09:00

Sunny day yesterday, good for walking around. I rediscovered the yap coin in Hibiya Park. Worth 1000 yen in 1924, or so said the little note beside it. Gift of the mayor, though at that time I expect the mayor of that Yap Island was Japanese.

Nice coin.

New School Year

2011-03-05T10:58:00.001+09:00

April begins the new school year. My youngest enters high school. Today I was filling out the forms. Questions like Father's occupation, phone numbers, home address. At the bottom bottom I was confronted by the same question that surprised me and gave me hope when my children entered Japanese elementary school - "What is your hope for your child's education?"

What a wonderful thing, asking a parent's hope, dream for his child entering a new school. It seemed a great and very Japanese thing to do. It gave me hope at a nervous time. And of course it is a frightening time, sending one's child to strangers to, "educate," to mold one way or another.

I was confronted by this question again today, "What is your hope for your child's education?"

I wrote the same thing I wrote on the elementary school form. It shows that I am a fool, at best very optimistic considering the reaction my hope received the first time.

My hope is that my child will learn to love learning. That is what I wrote.

The elementary school teacher read my hope and laughed in my face.

And it was, in retrospect, funny for what the school does, what is mostly taught is to hate education, to hate the idea of learning, to stop questioning.

The goal of education in Japan (and from what I recall in America as well) is to send another generation of unquestioning TV anesthetized morons, another box of cogs, into the world.

Girls Day in Japan

2011-03-03T09:57:00.000+09:00

Today is girl's day, Third day of the Third moon, the Peach Festival, a pretty time in the early spring before the cherries blossom. It is a sunny AM in Tokyo, hard cold wind. Kids are finishing up their school years, wondering what the next year will hold, maybe thinking about a week or two of break before it all starts up again.

Soon graduations will start happening, kimonos and toasts of congratulations, then April fools' day and the new year will begin.

I forgot to pay the rent on the studio, better get up and out to do it.

Peach festival/ girls day

2011-02-27T20:57:00.001+09:00

New painting for girl's day. 3/3/ now hanging in my house.

It is the first painting I have done for my house in many years. My kids like the word on the scroll inside the picture.

butterfly joint

2011-02-22T09:01:00.000+09:00

Yesterday the new pandas arrived in Ueno park, causing quite a stir. Earlier that day I had time for a little tea at the tofu place off the main cherry blossom promenade. The big main table was made out of a piece of an old ship or bath I think.. It was full of different sorts of connections and protections of wood. It reminded me of my favorite American craftsman, George Nakashima, who made the butterfly joint famous in America.

And if anyone can tell me why the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York would put the work of a man who worked most of his life in Pennsylvania and was born in Spokane, Washington and graduated from MIT, in the Japanese section I would appreciate hearing about it.

Japanese high school entrance test

2011-02-11T21:28:00.000+09:00

There had to be over 1000 kids in line to get in to take that high school entrance test today, at over 200 bucks a head, 200,000 dollars easy, just to permit the best of them to enter. Some racket this education biz. Of course the best of them are using this school as a back up, and although the school got their 200, they will not see any tuition from the best of them.

New Cover

2011-02-10T19:17:00.001+09:00

I am working on a new illistration for the next Cafe.

Anyone out there see these Cafe magazines? Usually I use sumie and color. But the last one I used western paint, and a chopstick. Don't know why, it just felt like a good idea to paint it with a chopstick.

I am back to playing with ink and washi for the next one.

Department of Japanese Mathmatics

2011-02-07T08:26:00.002+09:00

I was just listening to Neville Brody, the new Head of the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art, on the podcast speak of all the influences that make up art in a modern society, Speaking of British art being made by so many cultures and influences from so very long ago.

Last week I enjoyed the masters degree art student's graduation exhibition at the National Art University. It is funny to see, 8th floor, Oil painting, 4th floor, Nihonga.

Yoda. Nihonga. Foreign painting. Our Japanese painting. And the only determinable difference now is that the pigment is stuck to the ground with oil or acrylic on the 8th floor. On the 4th floor they use hide glue, mostly from the skins of Australian cows.

One of my students further blurred the line last semester when he, being a Nihoga student, starting to mix his "Japanese pigments," (imported from Germany, America, and China) with acrylic rather than with the standard animal glue. Hey man, that is acrylic paint - 8th floor for you! He relented and went back to using Australian animal glue as a binder. Nihonga again.

I say to clear all this confusion the other great Japanese universities should start to separate their disciplines too, Department of foreign mathematics - building 5. Japanese Mathematics - building 7. And the lot in building 7 still use soroban only.

yesterday's beans

2011-02-04T09:31:00.001+09:00

It was such a delightful time yesterday afternoon at the local temple near my studio, little kids old folks, parents, priests and old style entertainers, Japanese box jugglers, local dignitaries and the like up on the temple stage, Then the throwing of the beans and some kids candy - caramels, that sail pretty good, and bags of potato chips that float. Folks so excited to get some lucky beans. Kind of a riot of happy. A stark counterpoint to the Egyptians getting the government gun thugs in their faces this week.

It was just such a nice neighborhood thing, people behaving so well, special roped off area for the young kids from the local preschool, so they can get up front and not get trampled.

I made my own mask for coming home after teaching. My family was ready. They heard me come in and started to shout in Japanese - "Devils out!" and I got pelted with popcorn kernels. The local market was out of beans. I have to say corn hurts. But we cleansed our house of devils for another year.

Betwixt and between

2011-02-03T10:01:00.001+09:00

Half way between the Solstice and the Equinox, a precarous position. In America people stare at woodchucks, in Europe it used to be bears, as they comunicated with the spirits deep in the earth. In Japan we throw partched beans at the devils, and call out loud for good luck.

Some shrines have events, sumo wrestlers and the like throwing beans to the crowds that gather to catch lucky beans. In my old shrine they used to throw knives and scissors at the visitors.. When one of the locals told me I could not believe it, "They throw scissors out into a crowd of people expecting to catch lucky beans?"

He said, "Oh yes. And I was very luck last year! I caught a kitchen knife!"

It took a while for me to untangle the story, but it turns out that that part of Tokyo was famous for knife and scissors makers, and as a special teat they throw folded up pieces of paper good for a new knife or scissors, a hand made kitchen knife, quite a treat.

Afirmative Action

2011-01-23T10:33:00.000+09:00

My daughter took a test for admission to a very fine private high school in Tokyo. Well over 200 kids were allowed to apply for 50 positions, 25 positions reserved for boys and 25 positions for girls, though as my daughter was quick to point out the boy's scores are always lower than the girls.

Nice of them to give the boys a chance I guess, unequal thought it may be. Though it is not so nice as the medical schools used to be. I recall a student of mine, a woman at a top medical school telling me that her school only allowed 10% of the admissions to be female that year, in spite of significantly higher score. This was about 15 years ago now. Another friend at another medical school says that they admit now purely on merit. It the memory of the old system that causes me to select a lady doctor over a man when given a choice. My odds are better with the lady.

I recall the old joke, "What do you call the person that graduates last in his class in medical school?" The answer is of course that you call him, "doctor."

Rush hour

2011-01-20T10:06:00.000+09:00

I guess I've got the train ride inside me now.

spring cleaning

2011-01-16T18:39:00.000+09:00

Cleaning out the computer for the first time since we bought it, how many years ago? Wish we could find a market for dust.

Kevin Gray, at the Dickens

2011-01-09T11:08:00.001+09:00

Went out to Ebisu to the Dickens pub to see Kevin Gray and his band. Nice pub that does not try to be found, no sign on the street, or even a name in the elevator sign going up. This seems a trend with the gaijin pubs in Tokyo, not the Japanese chain English pubs, but the older pubs, a certain disregard with the general public. The Ueno pub too has let all its flags be blown away and it's big painted sign has rotted completely, leaving nothing but its metal frame. If you do not know it already you will have a devil of a time finding the place.. Though some people still do.

Friday night at the Dickens was quite full by 10 O'clock. I was not surprised by the smoke, the Ueno pub has even more. The surprise at, "What the Dickens," was noise. Some of the audience seemed to be fans of Kevin Gray, but still they talked through the entire set, loudly to make themselves heard over the music. Funny sorts of fans. But it seemed to be the way at Dickens. Kevin himself was fine, great original songs, the sort you do not get a chance to hear every day.

Just up the street, past Dickens on the left, is a great little Sri Lankan restaurant, street level, I stumbled into by mistake. Worth a visit on its own.

How was your 2010?

2011-01-05T10:56:00.000+09:00

One busy parts of my last year was painting fusuma.

This is a 4 door fusuma for a medical clinic in Kinshicho, Tokyo, the building just completed at the end of last year.

There were 3 others, 2 sets of 3 and another 4 door fusuma for a residence in Kamakura, the theme of this Kamakura painting was much more traditional. As requested I tackled one of the oldest themes in Japanese painting, the 7 drunken saints in a bamboo grove. This was the first fusuma I started, thought it in fact took me 7 years to finish.

one of the seven saints

The Industrial revolution, New Year musing

2011-01-03T10:44:00.001+09:00

No one expects the Spanish inquisition, nor did they expect the industrial revolution. England bloomed, and was the rich center of the world in 1851. By 1890 they were in the crapper.

I came to Japan in 1989, the top of the bubble, bookstore windows around the world advertised the Japanese Economic miracle.

Try to find a book on Japanese principles of business management now.

Japan’s economy has been in the toilet for the full 21 years I have lived here.

Is there some connection to England’s ride with the industrial revolution?

One similarity stands out to me, the education systems, Oxford, Cambridge, the classics. The British were doing there best to teach Hebrew and Greek, while the Germans, the French, the Belgians, and the Americans were learning hydraulics, chemistry, and mechanics.

Japan is still running the same cram school, pack as much wrote learning into their kids head to pass the same standard entrance to university they were running 30 years ago. Meanwhile we are already deep into a new revolution. Japan has done its best to keep its brightest minds behind.

In our daily changing information age the two things that has been long banned from Japanese schools are creativity, and personal initiative.

Have you ever visited a Japanese elementary school? I have - Clean, well funded, bright shining teachers and students, all in a sit down and shut up situation. Everyone is helped, encouraged to get the right answer. But it is always the answer that is expected. No one deviates from the path and survives.

Have you ever visited an exhibition of Japanese elementary school art? Every 3^rd grader’s work is the same. Every 4^th grader’s work is the same. It sends chills up your spine.

I teach in University. Even in art University the students are well trained to find out and do exactly what is expected. Japan is the easiest place to teach in the world because the students are so well programmed out of questioning authority.

On the bright side, as Mr. Leonard Cohen reminds us, it is from the cracks that the light come in. What college did Bill Gates graduate from? Steve Jobs? Where did Thomas Edison attend university? Or Sir Richard Arkwright, for that matter? Most everyone knows the answers are none, none, none, and none.

Japan has a thriving game culture. And manga have replaced the Japanese management books of a generation ago in bookstore windows.

And right this holiday second, walking the back streets of Akihabara, between the maid cafes and used computer shops may yet be the drop out hope of Japan.

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T10:04:00.000+09:00

Painting with silver this New Year's Day.

ready for the new year

2010-12-31T20:35:00.000+09:00

Fixed my lantern. I am clean and ready for the new year. I may even paint with silver tonight.

Get Ready for the New Year

2010-12-31T09:27:00.000+09:00

I have a theory that Japanese New Year food tastes much better if you have to suffer to get it, like wine that is better if you pay more for it. Why else would they stand in 4 hour department store lines or face the crowds I faced yesterday just to get food that could easily be gotten by waiting at home for it to be delivered, or gotten from the local grocery.

Stolen sweets are not sweeter, suffered for is better in Tokyo.

Christmas/New Year break

2010-12-28T10:43:00.000+09:00

Hard to transition, to switch from teaching thinking to painting non thinking. these days I do it by making something, to relax.. This time I have made some single bottom getta for my eldest. Seems to be working out. She wants them painted black, so it will take a little more time.

A rabbit roll

2010-12-20T16:13:00.000+09:00

Rabbits for the new year. I have had some postcard pressure. But this weekend I managed to cut a stone I like. The cylinder prints are fun to make and fun to print, just roll them out. And they are different depending upon where the roller starts on the paper. I made a roller a couple years ago that was capable of telling 7 different stories.

pretty much down

2010-12-12T08:42:00.000+09:00

The White Bath Sento of Yanaka if pretty much down. It was a beautiful all wood building and a great bath. I wonder what will go up in its stead? Is Yanaka betting better or worse?

getting better

2010-12-08T10:31:00.000+09:00

I am in more demand that I thought. Someone stole the painting right off my undon in front of my studio this week. Either I am betting better, or my audience is getting drunker - I notice the thief did not do a very good job, and left the edges of the painting behind.

Monday Rabbit

2010-11-29T20:56:00.000+09:00

We had an accident with our rabbits last week.

I was in the bath. Shouting and screaming could be heard from the outside, calls for me to come. to come quick. Bit trouble with the rabbits. being naked and in the bath I declined.

Sometimes it is better to not get involved. Children and wives are far more capable than they may at first imagine. It is good to let them find it.

The rabbits, one boy, Madara, and one girl, Daifuku, Dyfuku the result of an accident between our former rabbits, Piyunta (male) and Ell (female), Madara a Monday rabbit escaped from Ueno Zoo.

That Madara was a Monday rabbit is only my guess, but not without reason. Monday Ueno Zoo is closed, so it is the day that they throw a couple of the adolescent rabbits that have outgrown the petting zoo into the cage with the Tigers. tigers it seems get lethargic on a constant diet of dead meat and enjoy the sport of a Monday rabbit or two.

Madara was capture dazed and lonely on a Tuesday morning, by the police, just outside Ueno zoo. They brought him to me as they knew I kept rabbits. We found out later that he is a natural escaper, always finds or makes his way out. All this leads me to the suspicion that he was a Monday rabbit. For the bars and cage made for tigers keeps them well in. But it is no match for a escaper rabbit, especial with the extra motivation of being chase by tigers.

But this is all very far from my Sunday night, quiet in the bath, loud in the garden emergency.

Bad M+M

2010-11-22T16:33:00.000+09:00

I slept on an M+M again last night.

The M+M, cleanest member of the chocolate family, designed for the US Defense Department for just that reason, to be shipped overseas during the Big One to melt in our boys' mouths and not in their hands, but a full night of the heat and pressure of being under me is of course too much even for the mighty M+M. It finally gave way to the nature of its inner self and looks for all the world like a bullet hole when one wakes up in the morning having slept upon it, usually in the upper body or thorax region.

In the early morning confusion of just having woke from sleep, and perhaps a dream, to go to the toilet and find a bullet hole still sticky in one's mid section can cause quite a stir, I mean if you give way to the natural urge to scream in panic, "My god I’ve been shot!"

This kind of early morning outburst is good for no one - not the person clutching their side howling for emergency assistance, running in and out of other people's bedrooms, nor the family rudely woken from their own Sunday morning sleep by what seems to be a bullet shot man.

And that this was not the first time I have been tricked by an M+M. You might think I would ready for the tricks of a melty M+M. But no one is ready for such a thing at 5:30 in the morning.

So beware, for all the good it will do you.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-14T21:11:00.000+09:00

Japan and America are very far away from each other, and with things like grammar and general thinking we seem to be backwards from each other, But both in November give thanksgiving. Americans give thanks in a wider thanks for what is in front of me sort of a way. In Japan we give thanks for our children. 3-5-7, Three year old and seven year old girls, five year old boys - Thanks that they are alive and growing.

I went to my friend's shichi-go-san today. It was a delight and a memory of my own kids at that age.

at the local jinga.

Another Sento Gone

2010-11-09T18:23:00.000+09:00

I saw this sign posted next to the door of my favorite public bath - HatsunenoYu, the White Bath of Yanaka.

It says that the sento will be closed November 21st.

Public baths have been closing in Tokyo at the rate of 100 a year for 10 years now. If the 7 withing walking distance of my studio 5 have closed since I came to Japan.

OK, for Americans it is probably an unbelievable pain in the ass to go out of the house, and walk 10 minutes down the road to take a bath. America has been so rich for so long people pretty much forgot what communal feels like. The culture was dieing out in most of Tokyo before I arrived, pack up your kit and walk down the street, meet your neighbors in the bath. Kids playing, making noise, having fun with their friends, time for a little talk with neighbors, if you were feeling rich a bottle of soda, or juice, or even a beer when you were done. Then back out in the rain, or cold, or like tonight - a beautiful new moon in a clear autumn sky, and walk home and go to bed.

There is a difference between luxury and convenience. A unit bath in your own little cement shell apartment is convent . A big old public bath steamy hot, a painted Fuji on the back wall, with neighbors, kids, enemies and friends is a great luxury that soon people will only be able to read about, those that still have the inclination to read.

This is the old sento closest to my old house, now turned into an art gallery. I wonder what will happen to HatsunenoYu.

Painting again

2010-11-03T09:50:00.000+09:00

My show is over, and it is good to be able to take down the walls and start to paint again. While the exhibition was still going on I found myself thinking of some very thick and absorbent washi I had deep in my closest.

Today I started a tiny self portrait on the thick rough paper. This is a cell phone photo of part of it along with a photo of the studio getting back into working shape.

John le Carre

2010-10-22T23:03:00.000+09:00

I pre-ordered his new one and it came this week by mail. I have only gotten to page 6 but I have to say so far it is OK..

From page 2:

...his rhetoric had alarmed him. Would Orwell have believed it possible that the same overfed voices which had haunted him in the 1930's, the same crippling incompetence, addiction to foreign wars and assumptions of entitlement, were happily in place in 2009?

If there is anything le Carre goes after better than the Brits, it is the Americans. But as I said, I am only on page 6 so far.

Why?

2010-10-19T22:53:00.000+09:00

After the exhibition a person is tempted to ask, "why?" Why go through the economic, emotional, and physical expense of the thing?

Economic is easier. Sales were sufficient to pay the nut, so OK. And a big thanks to kind and friendly souls with the great good taste to purchase one of my masterpieces.

The other questions are harder to answer.

Though I do believe an artist should show, except for the outsiders that can not bring themselves to do it. Show and tell is an old tradition.

The best received of my works were the nearly thrown away head that Sachi tied the Art group cloth around and directed me to stick to my street sign and the way my favorite painting turned.

I am not sure it was even important to many visitors that the image was workable in any direction they turned it. I just think they enjoyed turning, having something to do, being a physical part of things.

If I can get up the strength to continue this 20 year old habit of October exhibitions next year I will certainly try to have another doll or puppet head in the street to terrify passing children and something for the adults to turn, poke, twist or otherwise push around.

Thanks to all.

Last day

2010-10-16T21:05:00.000+09:00

the back of the book of hours

It has been 2 weekends and the week between them. I was lucky to have many friends old and new visit. Tomorrow will be the end of it.

I made a video late last night before I went home. youtube of the show

Exhibition on the wall and street

2010-10-14T19:55:00.000+09:00

There are surprises and levels to an exhibition that were not planed. For the people passing by, especially the children, this head I stuck on my sign at the last minute is most popular, in the case of the younger ones, horrifying. I had to hang the cloth to mark the exhibition as part of the Geikoten art festival, the head, one of a hundred ideas gone bad, was fished out of my garbage by my wife and tied appropriately

New Work

2010-09-28T20:43:00.000+09:00

The Book of Hours 2010

These new paintings are hard to explain. They have no top, or rather they have many.
Most are views inside my favorite bar. In that place everyone has their own point of view.
Each painting has writing to go with it, each part with a different way up.
These pieces are meant to be folded into a sort of a book. But displayed on a frame that makes them resemble a kite.

"Buildings don't make books."

2010-09-28T20:41:00.000+09:00

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.

spreading ink

2010-09-12T19:01:00.000+09:00

The first thing I do is grind my ink. The second is to mix different gradations of ink for painting.

It is a little depressing to find that the random patterns in the paint dishes when mixing are often more beautiful than my paintings. The same thing used to happen when oil painting, the pallet, or a scraped away canvas looking better than a finished painting.

The same thing happens to stock traders I am told, beaten by the market itself or a monkey with a dart board.

Money, art, culture, it is hard to beat the random.

But still we try.

Still Hot Summer

2010-08-27T09:14:00.000+09:00

Tokyo has had a run of hot sunny days. Ambulances are running the overheated to local hospitals in a constant stream.

It is about now that one feels that summer will never leave, high 90s for the rest of time. But riding my bike through Ueno park I could hear the samba band practicing, and could see the new mikoshi well on their way.

The Tokyo Fine Arts University festival is nearly here, which means that Autumn is nearly here as well. Geisai will be September 3, 4, and 5 this year.

last night in Ueno Park

New Paintings

2010-08-20T16:39:00.000+09:00

John Irving says that before he begins a story he already has written down the last line. Before he starts he know the ending. It may be true, but I know that between his first line and his last his book will take him places he never expected.

If you want me to paint you a horse, I will paint you a horse, or an apple, or a sunflower, or a naked man. But when I am really working, I can no more control my paintings than I can control my dreams.

My new series of paintings comes as a complete surprise. I am not sure what they mean, and to tell you the truth, I am not even certain which way is up.

point of view at a gaijin bar

3 sting banjo

2010-08-07T10:00:00.000+09:00

New banjo is done, 3 strings and a drone. Hoping for that high lonesome sound, but as I used a little samba drum for the pot, it has that high pop of a samba drum, more of a surprise to me than I suppose it should have been. Fun to play though. Took it for its test run to the pub last night. Mike had his old time banjolin and sang a couple old time folk blues songs. Real fun.

Now back to the studio and to paint this time. Banjos production will rest for a while

Kyoko Nakajima

2010-08-05T10:00:00.000+09:00

It is a very happy thing to have a friend recognized for her hard work and creativity. Kyoko-san has been writing such beautiful stories. Now that she has won the Naoki Award her books are right out front!

Empty Nest Syndrome

2010-07-30T09:29:00.000+09:00

Maybe that is why I keep starting banjos - My work table freshly empty calls out for another banjo to begin. Actually I have an idea about trying to get that high lonesome sound that Bill Monrow spoke about, the two string chords of the mountain fiddle player, with a little 3 stringed banjo.

Rooting about in my studio for a piece of wood for the neck I came upon a wonderful old thing from a neighbor's house. It was that part of the house that Japanese call a, "nageshi." It is a heavy strip of wood that runs all around a traditional Japanese room, about top of the head height along the top half of the wall beams. I do not know the original purpose, but the locals use it for hanging things, everything from art, to certificates from the emperor, to shirts on hangers you intend to wear the next day. The room my neighbor was renovating was built some time in the Meiji Era. That tree was cut down over 100 years ago, cut and ripped and worked all by hand out of Japanese wood. More effort went into that nageshi than digging and cutting a diamond. I could not see the wood thrown away, so it waited in my studio for this banjo call. It is a kind of softwood, unusual for an instrument neck, but hard, straight grained and strong. I had to fill some nail holes, as it is originally attached, nailed into the beams through a "V" shaped carpenter's cuts in the back.

It is part of the fun, wondering how it will sound, or if it will even work.

R2D2

2010-07-26T21:53:00.000+09:00

The good news is that the sheet metal is on the banjo and stopped cutting my fingers. The bad news is that the resonator sound it makes got me way too interested in blues and the slide sound. I am seriously thinking of making the rounds of the recycle shops and buying a 50 dollar Japanese guitar like Hound Dog Tailor had.

One things does lead to another in this world.

an inturption

2010-07-25T11:56:00.000+09:00

Last night walking through Ueno Park I heard sounds. It is my usual course, from my studio at the end of a good day, to the pub on a Saturday night. Last night my way was blocked by a parade, rolling right down the main wide Ueno Hiokoji.

The group I saw first Japanese ladies, 50 of them in the same colored yukatas, dancing a summer festival dance, with a big loud speaker pulled out in front of them and a scratchy record playing a traditional Japanese song. Next came the samba, drums and whistles and some very genki dancers on one of the hottest nights of the year.

Libby's Ride

2010-07-23T23:10:00.000+09:00

I was just looking at Libby's travel Blog, her and friend in a wagon traversing America. Downsizing. Real nice. Up from the Southwest and back to the land where the Conestoga began.

http://www.whittleddown.com/2010/07/grand-tour.html

sharp metal

2010-07-22T19:20:00.000+09:00

I hate working with sheet metal. I can't go 2 minutes without cutting my finger, foot, leg, or arm. I don't know how my late friend Shoki did it, putting up sheet copper roofing every day. But as I remember he turned up at the pub with new bandages on his hands most every day. I hate sheet metal, but this dobro banjo just can't go any other way. I tired strips of teak on the front and it looked like someones patio.

sheet stainless

Stay tuned

back streets

2010-07-21T23:16:00.000+09:00

I went down the big wide Meiji Dori to get food for the rabbits.

On the way home I went a stray, little streets I had no idea were there. Animal trails that turned into roads not long after Edo. People that live, tiny family factories, shopping streets, all fading, in the back shadow of these big new apartment buildings. Different people, a society hidden from the new main stream, as they are not on the way to the station or the grocery store. Apartment house ghosts have no idea that people live behind them. (Don't tell them)

I found this drunken dancing dog on a shutter of a pet shop sinking now into time.

New Banjo

2010-07-18T10:14:00.001+09:00

I am making another banjo.

Years ago my wife asked my mother, “How many banjos does a person need?” It was a good question. My answer continues to be, “One more.”

Each one is different. One long with a shamisen neck, one short made with a tambourine, for putting in my bag, one with a dobro resonator, making a blues sort of a sound.

This new one is altogether different.

Japanese father

2010-07-16T08:25:00.000+09:00

It is essential for a father in Japan to have pets to feed in the morning, especially a father of teenagers. The rabbits wait expectantly, the birds begin to sing, even the goldfish rise up in their tank when they feel my steps through the earth.