Fourth entry of my woodcut journey! This is of a park clock in the city where I grew up in Japan. It is my first attempt doing letters and numbers. They are hard to do consistently and so easy to mess up as you can see. I do think I am improving and I have some more ideas of what I would like to cut next. The wood block is about 3" x 3.5" and I am using honsho paper and sumi.
Personal story relating to the woodcut print below (CW: bullying, racism).
Growing up in Japan as ha-fu and going to public schools, it was hard to make friends. So in second grade, when three of my classmates invited me to play after school, I was ecstatic. Although they were classmates that bullied me on the regular, I considered them as the nicer kids as they would still interact with me. The kids that would ignore me or look at me as a dirty creature were much worse in my opinion. Anyways, the three bullies told me to meet them after school in a park at 3pm. I remember being excited and immediately leaving my house on my bike after I got home, getting to the park around 2:30.
I waited there with so much anticipation, but none of my three classmates arrived when the clock hit 3pm. I started to get nervous, thinking maybe I got the wrong park or maybe I misunderstood the time. But I was still mainly excited, as it was my first time being invited to hang out. For all I know, they are just running late. So, I waited there, next to the clock, at the park. When 3:30pm came by I thought maybe I was too late. Maybe they had already met at the park, saw that I was not here and went on to a different location. But I told myself that was unlikely as I came immediately to the park.
I continued to wait and it was 4pm. I was pretty anxious and worried that I made a mistake on the instructions of meeting at the park. Maybe they said it was 4pm, maybe they said somewhere else. I decided to call my mom to see if my classmates called my house to try to get a hold of me for change of plans or something. (My mom gave me a 10 yen coin before I left my house in case I was going to come home late. There was a telephone booth at the park and the 10 yen would give me a minute of call time to let her know. This was the early 2000s) My mom picked up my phone, asked how I was doing and why I was calling. I told her that I was still waiting for my classmates and was wondering if they gave a call to our house. She told me she hasn't heard anything and that I should come home. I told her I wanted to wait just in case they were late and she told me to come home if they weren't here by 5pm. So I hung up and waited.
I still hadn't lost hope and was trying to figure out if I made a mistake. Maybe the invite was not for today but tomorrow, maybe they came by the park while I was waiting but didn't see me and gave up. I was also self cautious waiting at the park as well. It's a small park but it was popular and while I was waiting there were many other kids and parents that had come and went home. They would all stare from time to time at the "foreigner" looking kid waiting by the clock wondering what I was doing with my bike helmet still on. So when 4:50 came, I was desperate. I really wanted them to come. I really wanted to have my first hangout even if they were 2 hours late. Ten more minutes, that's all I had. After that I would have to go home. So I prayed and looked around carefully while checking the clock to see if I still had time to wait. But when 5pm came, my classmates were still not here. So I had to go home as my mom told me to.
When I got home I called one of the classmates homes to ask what had happened. The mom picked up and told me that she hadn't heard about those plans and that they were somewhere else playing. The next day at school I went to my classmate and asked if his mom said anything about ditching me. He said no. I remember being sad hearing that. (Maybe I wanted the mom to get upset at him and make him schedule a hangout with me as punishment or something) Later when the three classmates were together, I asked what had happened yesterday. I told them I waited at the park but I didn't see them. They laughed at me. They told me that they couldn't believe that I would take their invite seriously as no one would ever want to intentionally hang out with a person like me. I remember feeling dumb hearing that. Of course, how stupid I was to even think that people would want to hang out with me. I couldn't believe I was so naive to have hope.
Well that was the event relating to the woodblock that I made. I did end up making friends later. I had a really good 3rd grade teacher that ended up teaching us 5th and 6th grade as well. He really wanted to help me be accepted and spent class time addressing racism and bullying. I ended up becoming student body president in 6th grade, but that's a different and long story that had it's own problems.
