Katsu Tadahiko was born in January, 1947. His family made cloisonne ware and I remember having the strong sense that aesthetics related to form and color must have been a big part of his childhood. He pursued art related interests in college and in 1969 graduated from Nihon University with a degree, I believe, in ceramics. At this time, as far as I can determine, Katsu was totally unaware of National Living Treasure papermaker Abe Eishiro, who lived many hundreds of kilometers away in Shimane Prefecture. Abe, in 1970, was reaching the peak of his career. He had become famous for making exquisite papers of gampi fiber, many colored with natural vegetable dyes. Abe's paper was much in demand and he received a good deal of exposure through exhibitions and the media. Many young people had asked to serve as his apprentice but none had yet been taken in. I once asked Katsu how his apprenticeship with Abe came about. He told me his first knowledge of Abe came a short time after his graduation from college, when he read an article about Abe in a magazine published by a religious organization. As he told the story, I remember very clearly how Katsu motioned from his eye to the imaginary page in front of him: "As soon as my eye fell on Abe-san's photograph, I knew I was going to work with him." "How did you know that?" I asked. "I don't know," he said, "but I was certain of it. I just knew." Katsu promptly told his family of his plans to move to Shimane prefecture to work with Abe and they naturally became alarmed. Katsu had no contact with Abe, no introduction. "The man lives far away in another prefecture," they said. "To go there without some kind of proper intermediary would be embarrassing to all concerned and potentially a great insult to Abe. What's more, Abe is practicing a dying craft. Surely," they cautioned, "you will think twice about the wisdom of getting involved in a dead-end career." Katsu, unswayed, continued preparing to leave Tokyo. His girlfriend cried and could not understand why he was leaving her. He departed for Shimane with a backpack and a tent. He intended to camp in front of Abe's house until Abe took him in as an apprentice. Katsu arrived at Abe's house in the mountain village of Yagumo not far outside the city of Matsue in Shimane prefecture. Abe was not home when Katsu arrived and, as it turns out, it was probably for the better. Abe's step-brother was there and when he listened to Katsu's plan he shook his head and said it would not have gone well if Abe himself had been in. The brother suggested that if Katsu were really serious, he should go back to Matsue where the prefecture operated a research station for the local machine and hand papermaking industry. There, the brother advised, Katsu could learn the basics of the craft and then be in a better position to approach Abe. Katsu went directly to the research station. The director told him that they could not train Katsu because he was not a local resident. Katsu kept insisting and the director eventually asked him to leave the premises. A local police officer helped Katsu find some inexpensive housing for the night. The next morning Katsu showed up at the testing station, ready to work. This amazed the director. "Didn't I tell you you can't work here?" he said. "Didn't I explain that it's impossible. By law, by the laws of the prefecture, there's nothing I can do." Katsu persisted and five days later the research station accepted him as a trainee. Katsu worked very hard for a month and a half, learning everything they would teach him. It seemed clear to everyone that his appetite for the craft was voracious. One day while he was at work, word came down that Abe wanted to see Katsu. Katsu borrowed a 10-speed bike and rode the winding mountain road up to Abe's home in Yagumo Village. Abe invited Katsu in and took him to an area of his home where Abe had a collection of old papers and related items. They sat and talked for about twenty minutes, looking at paper specimens together. Then Abe said, "There's a place for you here and you can start next week." Katsu could barely contain his elation. When he rode the bike home, he told me, he went down the winding mountain road with his hands off the handle bars most of the way, screaming at the top of his lungs. During my two years studying papermaking in Japan, Katsu's relationship with Abe was the only time I saw anything in the paper community like the master/apprentice arrangement we envision in other crafts, like ceramics and swordmaking. Katsu was devoted to Abe, and Abe, in turn, was very invested in his student. After Katsu had settled in, Abe asked him if he had a girlfriend. Katsu explained that he did. Abe suggested it would be a good idea for Katsu to ask her to marry him. Katsu did just that, she accepted, and Abe acted as Katsu's father in the ceremony, as Katsu's true father had died when Katsu was young. Abe and Katsu also shared very closely an unusually traditional paper aesthetic. It focused on pure bast fibers (especially gampi) as raw materials, natural vegetable dyes, and the use of drying boards that left a distinctive wood grain imprint in the finished sheet. During my early travels in Japan I had been looking forward to visiting Abe and his shop. I had heard about Katsu and he, apparently, had heard about me. I visited for the first time in 1975. Katsu had been working with Abe almost four years. He did not say very much when I went into the shop. He was busy making paper. I asked a few questions, took a few photos, but stayed quiet mostly, and watched. Katsu stopped for a tea break, and we talked a bit more. That evening we met to talk again, the first of probably only ten meetings. Our time together was brief, but the moment always seemed loaded to me. Katsu Tadahiko was charismatic. He glowed with excitement about his craft and what he learned from Abe. I felt lucky to be around him, to speak with him. He must have decided early on that I too was eager to learn, because he always treated me with great respect. Faced with my poor command of the Japanese language, he was always patient. I had spent some time with Abe as well, but because Abe was busy with exhibitions and had ceased making much paper, he had asked Katsu to take time with me. I always felt Abe's request was somehow incidental, that Katsu's own genuine interest in me and our mutual interest in the craft made our time together special. Perhaps the manner of questions I asked made him attentive and eager to help. No matter what drove the discussions between us, nothing has had as profound an effect on the development of my career and aesthetics as those exchanges with Katsu Tadahiko. I had gone to Japan curious about hand papermaking but with many unfocused feelings. I arrived with a suspicion that some papers have more character and integrity than others, but I did not know how to define those qualities nor did I understand where they came from. Early during my stay in Japan, I did not know whether I would to stick with papermaking for the long term. But, as a result of my exchanges with Katsu, the papermaking I did while there, and my observations of older papers, I began to sense that the older methods were very much tied up in what I sought. One evening I asked Katsu a series of questions that became the most important ones I asked him, perhaps the most important ones of my career: "It seems like such a tragedy," I said, "that the old approach to the craft is rarely practiced today. Paper made the old way seems to have so much more strength, beauty, and heart than most paper made today. Isn't that true? And why did it stop? Why isn't it still done that way?" Katsu responded quickly, with a hint of anger and passion in his voice: "Barreto-san, you've got to realize that that way of making paper is gone. That papermaking life-style; the culture that expected quality handmade paper; the economy that made it possible: that is all gone. It's part of history. And you might as well not waste energy feeling sad or nostalgic about it. But you are exactly right; what makes handmade paper so special is directly connected to those traditional techniques. There's no way to cut corners, no way to do it faster or easier. And that, Barreto-san, that is why you and I and others who care deeply about this craft have to learn these techniques. We have to find out which traditions are essential, we have to come to know the heritage of the craft. Because if we don't, if we don't do this here and now, there will be no future to the craft. It will end as a result of our negligence. We will be responsible for the demise of the craft." This stunned me. I had never considered the notion that the future of the craft somehow depended on me. That Katsu and I and other young people working today were interfaces between the history and the future of the craft, that was a totally new concept for me. Over the weeks and months following this exchange with Katsu, instead of just being curious about the craft, a sense of purpose and honor began to be part of the picture. Not long thereafter I remember a particular day when I came to the realization that I would be very content devoting the remainder of my professional life to defining character in paper and then learning to render it. I felt like a marble rolling into a groove. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Everything clicked, and Katsu made it possible. Not long before I ended my two-year study in Japan, Katsu invited me to stay in Yagumo with him, his wife, and young son. We worked together for about five days making paper out of some Nepalese and Chinese mitsumata fiber that was new to both of us. At this point, in 1977, Katsu was nearing the end of his six-year apprenticeship with Abe. Abe had always wanted to go to Okinawa to help revive the craft of making Bashoshi, a regional paper made from a banana leaf stem fiber. The craft had died out during World War II. Abe felt the craft could be rekindled and that young Okinawans could carry it on. Because of his age, Abe realized he would not be able to take on the project and suggested Katsu should. Katsu was very interested in the idea. After careful thought and planning, in December of 1977 Katsu moved to Okinawa with his wife and son. During the next ten years Katsu had great success reviving the craft of making Bashoshi, working with an island variety of gampi called aogampi, and teaching young Okinawans to carry on the craft. He received considerable media coverage and a wide variety of awards for his papers. In an October 1981 article in the Ryukyu News, an Okinawan newspaper, Katsu said: It's possible to make paper like that made 100 or 1,000 years ago, [if one uses] tools and methods which do not differ greatly from those of that period. When you make paper like this, you can hear the words of the people of that age coming to you from within the paper. It's a very eerie, but pleasurable sensation. I want to repay my debt of gratitude [to my teacher] by giving life to the methods of papermaking which I have been taught. Every day I make paper, not from a sense of obligation or a sense of responsibility, but for the sheer pleasure of it. During the same time period Katsu became the recognized leader of the young papermaking community in Japan. These young people numbered about 150 out of a total of perhaps 1800 papermakers. The young papermakers group met annually and Katsu's devotion to his craft coupled with his magnetic personality, his warmth, and his youthful energy made him a natural leader. Because of the profound influence Katsu had on me and his peers, it came as a shock when I heard in 1987 through contacts in Japan that Katsu was seriously ill. Other Westerners admired Katsu very much. Writing to tell me of Katsu's death later that year, Rob Singer described his appreciation. Now Curator of Japanese Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Singer was one of my most important advisors when I studied in Japan, and a Westerner especially sensitive to Japan and the Japanese. I didn't know him nearly as well as you did but at the [young papermakers] conference held there last year I did get to know him much better and my admiration for him and his paper grew that much deeper. He was a wonderful person, besides being the creator of some of the most beautiful paper I have ever seen. Katsu Tadahiko died of pneumonia in October, 1987, at the age of forty. The Okinawa Times reported that nearly one thousand people attended his funeral. So here we are: the young Japanese papermakers, all of us, the readers of Hand Papermaking, and everyone else who cares deeply about handmade paper. Here we are without Katsu. Or so it seems. I would like to share a brief vignette, a flashback, a story within a story: I had been back in America from Japan for about six months, about the time Katsu was making his first paper in Okinawa. I was driving along in my van somewhere in the American Southwest on the first of two national lecture/workshop tours; traveling around, demonstrating the Japanese papermaking process, and talking about my experiences. I watched the landscape go by and mused, thinking about my life and work. I found myself going over all the things related to paper I wanted to learn, and it suddenly dawned on me that I would never get to it all. I could not possibly fit it all in. And then I realized that if I could get others--people younger than me--interested in the same things, then, effectively, I could do it all. It would happen. And as I thought about it, it became apparent that this is actually a way of defeating death. If we manage to give enough of ourselves to others, if we find ways of genuinely sharing what we have before we die, then when we die, we do not die--we live, we live in them. I did not realize it at the time but what guided my thoughts was my experience with Katsu, and Katsu's experience with Abe, and very likely, Abe's experiences with those who had taught him. So, the notion that Katsu is dead is wrong. He lives: in young Okinawan papermakers who worked with him, in those of us who knew him, in this story, and in his papers. If he could contribute here, now, he would quickly dismiss any discussion of his passing. He would urge us instead to take very seriously the craft of papermaking, its heritage, and its future; not out of a sense of obligation, but simply for the purity of the pleasure and honor it can give.