 |
~ Tedorigawa BookmakersAuthor: Tedorigawa Bookmakers
Creating Handmade Books and Writing Fiction in Kanazawa, Japan Language: en Genres: Arts, Books, Visual Arts Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Ep. 314: The Complete Saigawa Exploration Committee Notebook +
Episode 314
Friday, 18 July, 2025
Bookbinding This week in bookbinding, I made an A6-size blank notebook with a relatively unique cover. First, the book is six signatures with four folios each. It’s called The Complete Saigawa Exploration Committee Notebook. In both Japanese (犀川探検委員会全集) and, of course, English for you non-Japanese speakers/readers. The Saigawa is one of two big rivers that flow through Kanazawa (the other being the Asano river, meaning shallow river.) But the point of this book is the cover. First, it has a flap that goes over the front edge, but it’s not tied down. It covers about 2/3rds of the back cover, keeping the pages protected. Second, it is mostly green, as is the thread. On the front cover are two decorative bits. First, a wide vertical band of colorful red-blue-black-white Japanese-style chiyogami. But on top of the chiyogami is a wider, thin, green, lacy paper that is only glued down on the inside; the part that covers the front flaps freely. The endpapers on the back are greenish-red-yellow chiyogami with birds. The endpapers on the front are the same colorful chiyogami as on the front cover and the same bird chiyogami. Fiction I have just started writing again after the trauma of two+ months ago. However, I am looking at two unfinished novels. One is The Merengue Dancer and the other is Caraculiambro. I started The Merengue Dancer maybe three or four years ago. Merengue is a character from my novel Molly Bright. In that novel, he plays a free-spirited Japanese man who was a former company employee. He helps Molly and other vagabonds find a kidnapped physicist when the Japanese police aren’t interested. In Merengue, we learn how he came to be a free-spirited person. I started Caraculiambro maybe ten years ago. Maybe more. The name comes from Cervantes’ Don Quixote. He is a giant Don Quixote is going to fight, defeat, and give to his lady friend, Dulcinea del Toboso. Like Dulcinea, Caraculiambro is a figment of Don Quixote’s imagination; he never appears in the novel. He’s only talked about. In Caraculiambro, he is a giant, driven out of his hometown (Olympia), and he becomes a private detective in the town of S—, which he does not wish to identify (straight from Don Quixote, the novel.). The first character he comes across in the opening scene is a character very much like Don Quixote. He investigates a murder, a case of fraud, a conspiracy involving real estate, and the death of a character very much like Don Quixote. Video The Complete Saigawa Exploration Committee Notebook can be seen being folded and sewn (mostly) here. It is the longest video I have sprung on you, my listeners, at almost 14 minutes. I do a lot of talking and bookbinding on it, but it’s not packed with information. Please enjoy.
