etegami and the heat of summer

When the rainy season ends, making way for the intense heat of mid-summer, the Japanese customarily send out a special kind of greeting card called the shochuu mimai to ask after the health of their acquaintances. Like the New Years greeting known as nengajou, it is a postcard, and is sent primarily to friends and family members that one doesn't see very often. Sometimes they are unadorned cards printed with the standard phrase, but more often they depict photographs or drawings of something representing summer-- especially something refreshing, like flowing water, a cool drink, fluttering wind chime, or slice of dewy fruit. The custom of exchanging cards like these at various set times of the year may seem burdensome to some, but I find it smooths socialization with people who have been on my mind but whom I hesitate to contact without an excuse. I've attached some samples of summer greeting cards that I've drawn and sent in the past. A wedge of watermelon. A famous-brand cantaloupe (popular summer gift). A retro pig-shaped ceramic container for coils of mosquito repellent.

popov and the goldfish

This is an etegami I submitted to a mail art exhibit at the A.S.Popov Central Museum of Communications in St.Petersburg, Russia. I've been in "fish mode" ever since the etegami I drew for the Sea Exhibition. So I drew a goldfish and applied a new twist. The bubbles coming from the goldfish's mouth were cut out of a magazine and pasted onto the card. There are both Japanese and English words inside the bubbles. These bubbles, combined with the accompanying words, are my attempt to tie the drawing into the theme of the exhibit, which I understand to be the history of communications technology, and a celebration of Popov's 150th anniversary. [Alexander Stepanovich Popov was a Russian physicist who first demonstrated the practical application of electromagnetic (radio) waves.]

The card is, in a sense, a departure from traditional etegami-- a sort of fusion between etegami and collage. It's not something I would have dared to try with etegami until very recently. But my exposure to the wider world of MailArt has been influencing me to test certain boundaries. And I'm having a great time. : )

evolving into a global mail artist

My fairly recent discovery of the global community of mail artists has had an enormous impact on the way I think of etegami. Wikipedia has this definition of mail art: Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium. The term mail art can refer to an individual message, the medium through which it is sent, or an artistic genre. Mail art is also known as postal art and is sometimes referred to as Correspondence/Mail Art (CMA).

This may or may not be a sufficient definition of Mail Art. One site I came across further specified that the artwork must be visible to the people handling the mail on its way to being delivered. In other words, it's not Mail Art unless the mailman can see it. Art on postcards, such as etegami, qualifies (as long as it's not enclosed in an envelope), but art on the envelope itself also qualifies.

Though I think of myself as primarily an etegami artist, the astounding variety of styles and approaches towards mail art around the world has been a wonderful stimulus to my work. The images I posted above are of an etegami I am submitting to a mail art exhibit on the theme of The Sea. The drawing on the top is a porcupinefish (harisenbon) in repose. The drawing below it is the same fish in defense mode. This is the first time I've drawn on both sides of the card. Drawing on the side where the address goes is a little tricky, but it was a cool experiment, and I think I'll do it a lot more from now on.

general kuribayashi's etegami

This week I finally had the chance to watch Letters from Iwo Jima, the second of the pair of films directed by Clint Eastwood portraying the Battle of Iwo Jima. While the first film, Flags of Our Fathers, depicts the battle from the American point of view, Letters from Iwo Jima portrays the same battle from the Japanese perspective, and is almost entirely in Japanese. Though I had heard the film received very high reviews (it is an excellent film), I had no particular interest in seeing it until I learned that it was both inspired by and based on the actual letters of Commander in Chief Tadamichi Kuribayashi (portrayed on screen by Ken Watanabe), and that these letters were, in fact, picture letters (ie: etegami)!

Kuribayashi wrote to his family frequently and obviously loved them deeply. As his children were still very young, he kept his letters simple and filled them with drawings. The picture letters were published by Shogakukan in 1992 as Gyokusai Soshireikan no Etegami (Picture Letters from Commander in Chief). Amazon now carries three books (that I know of) in English that incorporate the translations of these etegami. If you are interested, you may want to start with this one: Picture Letters from the Commander in Chief.

war memories etegami

August means many things to the etegami artist in Japan, one of them being a time to reflect on war and peace, especially as it relates to the "Pacific War" (World War II). August 15 is known as shuusen-kinenbi (literally "memorial day for the end of the war"), and although another name meaning "the day for mourning of war dead and praying for peace," was officially adopted in 1982 by the Japanese government, it is still shuusen-kinenbi by which the day is commonly known. This year, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the opening of the National Showa Memorial Museum in Tokyo's Chiyoda ward, the public was invited to submit etegami depicting war and end-of-war memories. These submissions, along with letters, diaries, and other documents in the museum archives, are being displayed in the special exhibits room at the museum from July 25 to August 30.

I've scanned a few that were displayed in the August issue of Etegami magazine (mentioned in my previous post) to give you a preview of this exhibit. The etegami on the top right shows the touching reunion of a soldier with his wife and three children. In the middle is an etegami showing the cremated remains of another soldier who was not so lucky. The one on the left corner shows the evacuation of Japanese citizens from China. Many of the etegami are memories of running from burning buildings, of hunger, and of doing without. Yet, these memories often come with a joyful twist, such as the red book bag that one mother made from paper for her daughter's first day in school, and which the girl showed off to all her neighbors, though it soon fell apart. And a surprising number depict happy memories of kindnesses received from the American soldiers. One etegami that particularly caught my eye shows Japanese evacuees from China who have just stepped off the boat and await a shower of white "lice-killing powder" from the American plane above their heads.

If you are in a position to visit the museum during this exhibit, by all means do so!

detach yourself, sense life

When the August issue of Etegami Magazine arrived a few days ago, I realized I had forgotten to blog about the July issue. But I am forced to press ahead. There are so many interesting things to draw these days, and so many topics I still want to write about on the subject of etegami. The title of the August issue was "Sense Life and Draw with Detachment." [I'm still not clear on what I'm supposed to be detached from. Distractions? Expectations? The desire to excel?] But I suppose another way of translating it would be: Be focused.

The drawings that drew my attention were the ones you would expect in this season of growing things. Flowers in full bloom and newly harvested vegetables. Yes, I could sense the life in these things. They were fairly bursting with it. Then I looked through the pictures again. Drawings of home life. A school bag tossed in the corner of the room. A tiny girl carrying her baby sister (almost as big as she is) on her back. A pair of knitting needles and a half-finished woolen scarf. They were more subtle, and I had to listen harder, but I sensed life in them as well-- maybe more powerfully than the drawings of the flowers and summer harvest. It was an intriguing discovery. The evidence of life is everywhere, not just in the most obvious places. In fact, the August issue announced an etegami exhibit on the subject of war memories. Life was powerfully present in these drawings too. Even in the burning house and the white cloth-wrapped cremation urn. I'll tell you more about this exhibit in my next post.

my strawberry diary

Four months ago, even before our long winter was over, a strawberry seedling was delivered to my door. It was my first hesitant step toward raising something edible in my garden. I decided to keep an etegami diary of the plant's growth, and recorded the six main stages that I was able to observe. I drew it on the first day it arrived, in its tiny vinyl cup. A few weeks later, I moved it into a large planter and set it outdoors. But then the temperature plummeted and it snowed off and on for many days. I thought I had lost my strawberry plant. It was looking spindly, and the leaves were orange and brown-tinged. It turned out that the earliest leaves were just naturally withering away, and the leaves that replaced the first growth were lush and vigorous. A little later, pretty white blossoms appeared, followed by hard knobby green fruit. More waiting, and the fruit grew plump and red and ready to be picked. On the final day of my diary, I picked the fruit and used it in making ichigo-daifuku, an-filled (sweet bean jam) dumplings made of glutenous mochi rice, with my freshly picked strawberries in the center of each dumpling. My strawberry plant had fulfilled her destiny. And my strawberry diary had come to its end. Why don't you give it a try too? Record the growth of something dear to you with etegami.