Broke it

I broke the little spoon I use to dip water to make ink. I didn’t think about the thing until I broke it. I can’t remember where I bought it or when. It was from one of the specialty shops serving the sumi ink using community in Ueno.

Like the spoon, I didn’t think about those shops until they were gone. They died quietly. No horns, bells or whistles like a pachinko. One by one they folded.

I had no spoon, and no place to buy a new one.

There are lots of ways to move water, but I was used to my little cup, and my dipping spoon. It didn’t matter that it looked like a swans head. It was tool I had used enough to forget it was there. I didn’t have to think when I used it.

I missed my spoon.

I missed the shop that sold it.

I went over to Jimbocho. Both their painting shops were gone as well. There just aren’t enough of us to keep them alive. Ouch. I just had a birthday, and was feeling older by the second.

Dinosaur Jim.

The good news is that I fixed the spoon with some epoxy and a thin steel nail.

The bad news is that my favorite kind of painting, while not mainstream for 150 years, seems to be about to dry up and blow away.

A Jug Band Song

Mama said to Papa, be quiet as a mouse

So Papa climbed up on the top of the house

Made a lot of whoopee, made a lot of noise

Stood up and cheered with the rest of the boys,

Baby's in the cradle, brother's on the town

Sister's in the parlor, trying on a gown

Mama's in the kitchen, messing all around

And Papa's on the housetop, he won't come down

I've been on the roof. First I was painting rust. When it was white again a dragon was suggested. But for whom to see? My little shack is landlocked on the narrowest of streets. Make a painting for no one on corrugated steel when I could at any moment slide off to my doom? I wouldn't do it. 

But in the back of my closet was a can of paint. I stirred it. Before I knew it I was back on the roof. Now I have a new dragon painted for google and god, it's only possible audience. Though I doubt either one has noticed.

Group Show in Kyobashi, Tokyo

Hanging a show at the Rashinban Gallery (http://www.rashin.net/index.php) in Kyobashi, Tokyo (January 27th - February 1st). Work by seven students and three other teachers. 

We are all part of an English chat group at Tama Art U. It makes for a diverse group of artists.

Graduation Exhibition at the National Art U

Graduation Works Exhibition… they sort of had that a month ago, This may be for the PhD. art graduates.

I spied some things getting ready at the old gate

The next question, are these the actual Graduation Works? Or are the works hidden below the blue plastic? We will have to wait until Tuesday to find out.

In any case, today life imitates art.

30 Years in Yanaka

Yanaka was a backwater when I found it, a place nobody knew unless they had close relatives in the ground here. Yanaka has cemeteries.

We also have history. We are next door to the first imperial school of music and art, the first imperial library, the first national art museum. The great imperial university was founded on the next hill. Mori Ogai, and Natsume Soseki both lived on DangoZaka. Higuchi Ichiyo walked thru. It was her shortcut home.

The roots of Japanese modern arts are here as well, Okakura Tenshin, Takamura Kotaro, Yokoyama Taikan were here.

But I don’t want to talk about history, at least not history that old.

30 years ago Yanaka had people interested in the arts. People were banding together to preserve old buildings and culture against a bubble trend of development gripping Japan.

People formed a Yanaka Gako, a preservation and cultural society. Some of them formed an art group, Geikoten, local architects, artists and others that put together a wondrously complicated map and a month long neighborhood wide exhibition of art and culture in October.

Within a year another art group formed; was it a rival group? Sometimes it seemed so. That group was called Art Link. They had powerful art backing, the National Art U. museum, Ueno Mori Art Museum, SCAI the bathhouse gallery, and the Tatami people. Their exhibition map was simple, well distributed and didn’t cost a hundred yen. They had corporate sponsors. People in company buses visited on mass in October.

I was in both groups, and liked them very much.

Arts in Yanaka were blossoming. People came from far away to see how we did it, to set up community festivals of their own. I was blossoming too. Sumi ink was new. My family was young. Things were going very well and would only go better.

30 years now since I first waked up Kototoi Dori hill, past the shops selling artist pigments, past the brush maker’s shop. Art Link ended. Geikoten still goes on, but more for new cafes and bookshops, fancy new bakeries, craft beer, and bagel shops. Geikoten is promoting different culture now. I have become a dinosaur. It was not what I had intended.

New Year's Cards

Before 1907 Japanese postal law didn't allow a message on the same side of a post card as the address. People were forced to write on the image.

Here is a New Years card sent in 1905 to an American friend.

People stopped sending battle ships for new years some time ago.

New Year’s cards themselves are now dwindling. Line messages prosper. I still send. Today I will decide 2020’s design. Shall I go with the year of the rat? Or Icarus?