Back in the fall of 1986, I used to 'commute' from my apartment in Hamura all the way down here four or five times a week. In those days, the 'Yoshida Hanga Academy' was still open, and for a few months I had a place at one of the student benches. Toshi-san was still alive in those days of course, and he felt that it was very important to provide a place where people from other countries could be exposed to the Japanese printmaking traditions.

There were two rooms, a longish one with two wide benches at which the students worked, and a smaller attached room where Yoshida's two printers worked on the family printmaking - pulling editions of Toshi-san's new prints, reprints of his previous work, and endless editions from the blocks left behind by Hiroshi-san, Toshi's father. In my day, the two printers were Komatsu Heihachi, and Hamano-san.

I stayed only a few months, leaving for a few reasons: I was getting totally tangled up with toy-making at that time, finances were very tight and I couldn't really afford the (very reasonable) studio fee and the (very expensive) transportation, but mostly because I was very disappointed that there was no carver in the workshop (the Yoshidas used photographic reproduction methods for their keyblocks).

Anyway, fast forward almost exactly twenty years, and here I am again in the same rooms. It has become very quiet here; the school closed shortly after Toshi-san passed away, as his son Tsukasa decided not to continue. The long room seems to be pretty much unused; some prints are drying in a stack on one of the tables, but the rest seems to be just for storage.

And the printer's room too, is very different. Hamano-san's workstation is gone, but Komatsu-san's is still there, although completely cleaned up and empty of tools and materials. He is now 81, and retired a couple of years back.

Numabe-san has a small workspace right next to where Komatsu-san used to work, and I think he has just kept the same arrangement from the time when the two of them used to work side-by-side. I can understand his reluctance to move across into the space that was used by Komatsu-san for so many years ...

He stands up to work, as do many of the younger printers these days. (Numabe-san is 54 ... exactly my contemporary). Here he is, brushing the pigment onto one of the blocks for Toshi Yoshida's 'Half-moon Bridge'; in the background, perhaps you can see Komatsu-san's empty workstation ...

If I move the camera slightly, you can see into his workspace. The stack of partially finished prints is under the cloth on the shelf in front of him, just above the cups containing the pigments for this block.

After each sheet is rubbed, it is flipped over face-up onto the moistened newspaper stack at his left, where he gives it a quick once-over to make sure that colour and registration are staying under control. After each couple of dozen sheets, he covers them with another sheet of moist newsprint.

When he gets to the bottom of the pile of 120 sheets that makes up this 'edition' (or perhaps I should say 'batch'), he flips them over into a face-down orientation, puts them back onto the shelf, and prepares the next block and pigments.

Gary, are you looking closely? In that first photo ... under his right arm ...?

Yes, there's one of the proofs of Hilo Bay that I took along, together with the set of blocks. We had a good discussion about the print; I had prepared a set of block proofs, showing how I had arrived at my result, and these were an excellent guide to introduce him to the image. I also left with him the original printout from Gary, along with a list of 'talking points' that we have covered on these pages.

He still has a bunch of work to finish off for the Yoshidas, and that'll probably take him to around the 10th of June or so, but he'll then clear the decks for Mokuhankan work. (The Yoshidas have no problems with him doing outside jobs at his bench here; they're very happy with the amount of time he can spend on their work, and don't expect to be able to monopolize his time.)

I then showed him the Aspen Grove proofs, both Mike's and mine, and just as we were digging into those, Tsukasa-san came down from upstairs. I didn't have that block set with me of course, but I described the construction method and outlined the difficulties of arriving at a 'finished' conception, when there were so many possibilities in the image. Tsukasa-san thought the whole thing was pretty 'cool', which is not really a surprise, because the Yoshidas have always been pretty open to new ideas in printmaking, even though one would hardly call them 'cutting edge'.

The three of us looked at the different versions from close up, and we looked at them from afar. The only thing that seemed to be a consensus was that Mike's version is kind of too saturated and strong, and mine are too washed-out and weak. This much I know - it's finding the right place in-between that is the challenge!

Also - something I was a bit surprised at - Numabe-san is quite interested in this one too, and asked if he could do it. I wasn't sure what to answer; I've sort of been nurturing the idea that I would like to do this one myself ...

So we didn't come to any agreement on that, but what we did decide to do was to do some proofing on Aspen Grove during the same sessions as the proofing on Hilo Bay, and then see what develops.

Because we're not starting from zero on either of these prints, I think we can get them nailed down in three days, and we are planning the schedule on that basis. He will then - assuming we can come to agreement on the image - get busy with the edition(s).

He gets paid for his work by the sheet, and quotes a price on each job based on how long he thinks it will take him, working in his mind with a target figure of 20,000 yen per day, but quoted to the client in a yen figure per print. (Working six days a week at this figure just barely brings him to an average income by Japanese standards, and actually far less when you consider the bonus/travel allowances/retirement allowance/etc. that most salarymen get.) So for the proofing, I'm guaranteeing him his 20,000 per day for as long as the two of us think it takes. He will then take a good long look at what we've done, and quote me a 'per sheet' figure.

We then have a small area of disagreement coming, because I have a very small budget for this stuff right now, and can't afford to order the usual 100 or 200 copies, which is really the kind of order he needs to make the job worthwhile. (Making fewer copies means the proportion of his time spent in mixing and preparation as opposed to actual printing starts to grow too large). I'm going to want 50 of each, he's going to want to do 100, which would take him nowhere near twice as long. When he quotes the 'per sheet', it will be on the basis of a run of 100 copies.

The only way through the problem will be for me to tell him, "Look, for this case we'll just have to forget about that 'price per sheet' figure. If you can simply give me a guesstimate on how long the job will take you - working at the 'inefficient' quantity of 50 copies - then I'll promise you the 20,000 per day rate. At least that way you won't be losing out." It'll be quite a bit more expensive for me on a 'per sheet' basis, but at present, I just don't have any other options ...

Anyway, all in all an excellent afternoon, and I even learned some new things about printing by watching him work ... but I think I'll save those for another place and another time ...