Tokyo gave Zarina the space to live independently and immerse herself in Japanese printmaking. Work, apprenticeship, and a small rented room structured the year.
Tokyo 1974 · from Homes I Made / A Life in Nine Lines, 1997
A fellowship becomes a year
Building an independent life
A Japan Foundation grant brought Zarina to Japan in 1974. What had begun as a short visiting fellowship became a year away from the pressures surrounding her life in India.
Through contacts from Atelier 17, she found a printmaking community and met Father Gaston Petit, who helped her find work and a place to live. She also worked as an apprentice in Toshi Yoshida’s studio, exchanging her knowledge of Western printmaking for sustained study of Japanese woodblock practice.
Paper and daily discipline
Work all day, make at the weekend
The year deepened Zarina’s respect for handmade paper, precision, restraint, and the relationship between a carved block and its impression. These were not borrowed effects; they became part of the material discipline through which she developed her own language.
At night she returned to a small tea room rented in Yorioka, where she slept on a tatami mat and could see Mount Fuji from the roof. Weekends were reserved for her own work.
“I worked all day either printing for Father Petit, or working as an apprentice at the Toshi Yoshida Studio. On the weekends, I made my own work.”
Zarina · legacy family site, courtesy A/P/A Institute at NYU
