Taikan's letter to Keisen

These are my photos of the postcards I've purchased at Yokohama Museum last Tuesday.  The exhibit focuses on Yokoyama Taikan's art, but the first painting is "Night Cherry Blossoms" by Tomita Keisen, one of Taikan's students.  I like it so much for many reasons.  Under the painting shows a Taikan's letter to Keisen praising Keisen's talent and this "Night Cherry Blossoms."  How refreshing Taikan must have felt for the first time he saw it.  Today, we can see light-up cherry trees everywhere, but not early 1900s.  Nights were dark then.  I appreciated the letter.  I felt his personality behind the dynamic and innovative art.

Taikan is a huge, national artist, and even at the time, he was especially to all the accomplished artists led by Okakura Tenshin.  I've mentioned about Tenshin many times, but if you love Japanese traditional arts, please read "The Book of Tea" written by him in English.  Taikan was also bilingual.  Other three pictures are by Taikan.  Taikan literally means "Big Picture."  He certainly lived up to his name.

Contemporary Literary Horizon

My rest from blogging has brought me luck. It was a good thing, so I’ll continue to rest time to time. But I want to let you know that out of my resting-from-blogging period, I clicked the place I probably never would have clicked. It was my near dead former blog site below.
http://keiko-booksandtalksfromlosangeles.blogspot.com/

A new message was left there for more than seven months. It was from Daniel Dragomirescu of Contemporary Literary Horizon. To make a story short, I’m excited to tell you that my poem and story will appear in the next CHMagazine. I don’t know how it will all work out because it is just happening now, but Daniel is talking about translating my work into Romanian and Spanish.

Wow! Is Daniel talking about not just publishing my pieces in his magazine, but in three languages?! I write stories in Japanese also, but I don’t even translate my own English work into Japanese. It takes much effort to translate even one small poem. How can I express my excitement?

I appreciate this place. I appreciate you very much for reading this.