Letters from Tetsu Fusen - Illustrated Postcard Collection

Letters from Tetsu Fusen - Illustrated Postcard Collection presents the painter's correspondence with Tomiko Kuraishi over two years beginning in 1965. Drawings accompany everyday discoveries, pleasures and thoughts about painting, then turn toward memories rendered with the immediacy of present experience. Together, these small messages form a personal, partly autobiographical record.

Kuraishi was studying at Ochanomizu University when a friend took her to Fusen's studio in 1962. Fascinated by its unusual objects and atmosphere, she shared questions raised by a lecture about the difference between merely seeming to live and living sincerely. Fusen, already in his seventies and still searching for truth in his painting, responded through the correspondence gathered here.

The postcards became an artistic discovery for Fusen himself. Their unguarded words and images convey his delight in working late at night and his wish that others might enjoy them too. His reflections connect daily life with the experience of a painter whose path led from Tokyo and Izu Oshima to Kyoto and Nara.

Published by Kyuryudo, this Japanese-language A5 paperback contains 208 pages with 176 illustrations. It reproduces the correspondence as a book, rather than a set of loose postcards.