Eraser stamp artist Natsuko Taguchi appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) broadcast on January 16th. She spoke while showing off her own works.
Taguchi showed off a stamp that resembled Kuroyanagi's face. The design features an onion head with a ribbon and a small panda peeking out from above. "I carved it a little so that the ink wouldn't get in any unnecessary places," Taguchi explained. "I carved it about 5 millimeters," he said. "The eyes and nose are tiny, but with an eraser stamp you can print them nicely."
At first, he started making eraser stamps just for fun, but he gradually became obsessed. "If I had set a clear goal, if I had a target, I might have been satisfied and quit, so I just pursued the fun without having a target," he says.
He was moved by a photo of Kuroyanagi-san wearing a furisode kimono on 5th Avenue in New York, and brought a work that pays tribute to that. The title is "Courage." "I think it was wonderful how courageous Tetsuko-san was to go to New York in those days, and I wanted to convey in the title that it was like a baton of courage that would give us courage when we see the photo later," he said.
In the work, a panda is sitting on Kuroyanagi's hand, and since its neck is black, Kuroyanagi gave it her stamp of approval, saying it is a "proper panda."
