'... for Kubota-san ...'
... a page to allow fans and collectors to register support for Kubota-san during a difficult time ...
[early March, 2025] Mr. Kenichi Kubota, who has worked with Mokuhankan for a number of years, printing many of our woodblock editions, is ill.
Viewers of our Twitch streams have 'met' Kubota-san many times over the years, always in the same situation - Dave opening a package of prints he made for us:
No sooner does the package appear on Dave's bench than the comments begin: "That's from Kubota-san! I recognize the way he ties it up ." ... or ... "I wonder which one it will be this time ..." A minute or so later, I have opened it up, and we always see the same thing - a glorious and perfectly arranged stack of beautiful prints!
Kubota-san has been working with us for just about ten years, first printing many copies of the Great Wave for our Kickstarter campaign back in 2014, and since then being one of the main workers producing our subscription prints. In early February, just a few weeks ago, he visited us to pass on his 'new year greetings' to our printing crew here, and at that time chatted cheerfully with us, and expressed his desire for another good year of work together.
But we learned from him a few days ago that this is not going to be possible. He has received a difficult diagnosis, and has now been moved to hospital a hospice. It has all happened extremely quickly, and everybody involved - we here at Mokuhankan, and of course his family - are stunned by these events.
There isn't much any of us can do to help him in this difficult situation; medical care (and insurance, etc.) are all in place. But I (Dave) think that there is something that we can do. Each time that we open one of the print packages, what follows is always the same: Dave embosses the craftsmen's names on each sheet. The workers normally do that by themselves, but Kubota-san has always said, "We don't need that. I'm just the printer ..." It's not that he is trying to be self-effacing, it is that he honestly believes - through his shokunin's typical world view - that his work is 'nothing special'. And in the old days, that was true. 'Just' the printing business.
But we at Mokuhankan - and literally thousands of viewers of our streams - know that there is no 'just' about this. We all know what a special person he is. To work at such an incredibly high level, so consistently, for such a long time, and without any 'ego' getting in the way ... this is a huge accomplishment, the kind of thing that few of the rest of us can ever understand, let alone replicate.
I want to try to let him know how much he has touched us, so I have prepared this form where you can leave your thoughts. We will put these into Japanese and transmit them to Kubota-san through his daughter, who is managing his affairs. If you do choose to leave something here, please start by mentioning what part of the world you are writing from, as this is something that constantly amazed him - that his work was being sent here and there to so many places around the world ...
Thank you so much for your cooperation. I am saddened beyond description by what is happening, but we can perhaps mitigate the sadness in some small measure by helping him understand how he has affected many people's lives ...
[Input received so far is displayed on this page ...]
Please send your thoughts to us, for forwarding to the family ...
Kubota-san's tools, workbench, pigments, and other professional materials are now safely stored at Dave's home. There will be video, documentation ... and more. But please be patient, as this will all take time ...
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Kubota-san, I am not in Asakusa at the moment, I am writing this from Ome ... and surrounding me are the boxes that we brought here from your workshop. When we met your daughter on the day that we did the moving job, she expressed her thanks to us for the cooperation, saying that we had 'helped her' a great deal. But for us, the feeling is the other way around - moving a few boxes was a very easy job for us, and we needed no 'thank you' for it. It is us who must offer our thanks to you for the incredible opportunity you have passed to us. Our plan is this:
But there is a bigger plan for Mokuhankan; it is our hope that we will be able to create a Mokuhankan Museum/Gallery of traditional printmaking, based around my personal collection of prints. Our current Asakusa building is too small for this, but as our business grows, we will eventually be moving to a larger space, and it is at that time we hope to incorporate this plan. Your printing tools - your entire workstation - will then become a very important part of our mission, to make sure that future workers can have a clear understanding of how high-quality printmaking was done 'in the good old days' ... Showa / Heisei / Reiwa ... I cannot thank you (and your daughter) enough for giving us this opportunity, and for trusting us with your treasured set of tools. We will always treat them with the respect they deserve, and will work to make sure they become a living legacy of your life. As you have perhaps already learned from the comments left on our website, a great many people around the world know about you, and your wonderful skills. Each time one of your print packages arrived at Mokuhankan, we opened it up on a Live Stream, showing and describing to the fans the stack of prints you made. And each time, I also embossed the craftsmen names on the prints. You didn't feel this was important, but I did, so it became my work on Live Streams to emboss ［ 彫：名前 摺：久保田 ］ on each and every print, while everybody watched. These Streams are typically watched by between 6~8000 people, so over the past few years, a very large number of fans have thus had an excellent chance to learn about you. They never saw your face. They only saw the work you created. They saw the deep and smooth printing, the identical colour from one print to the next, the perfectly trimmed edges of the stack of prints, the perfect way you so neatly tied each package ... and they always heard the pleasure in my voice as I opened the packages, showed them the prints, and talked about them. So, a short time ago, when I told them that you were seriously ill and would not be able to make more prints for us - they were not only shocked, but deeply affected. They asked me how they could help. Of course, there is nothing they can do directly to help you, but I arranged a way for them to send you short messages to express their support for you, and their appreciation for what you have created. I hope you have been able to read at least some of these, and that they might serve to bring you an awareness of how far and how wide your influence has spread. You are one of just a handful of people about whom I can honestly say, "He changed my life." You were one of the first craftsmen in Tokyo who took me seriously and treated me as an equal. I wasn't your 'equal' of course, but to have the support and encouragement of somebody working at such an incredible level gave a huge boost to my conviction that I would be able to 'make it', at a time when that was far from clear. I will forever be proud of the work I have done together with the mokuhanga 'Last Samurai'! Thank you again ... Dave |
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