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no. 1017, Oiso, Japan Dear B.B., While I was contemplating to write to you, and yet postponing it day by day, as I am terribly busy after my absence from Japan for five months, your letter of May 27th arrived. With a guilty feeling, I take up my pen & report to you immediately, what I ought to have done long before. Your precious Chinese scroll had arrived here safely & been kept by Ambassador D’Ajeta with great care till my return. Then I transported it to the safe of this Institute of Art Research, Tokyo, (where I had been Director for twenty years, & after a short interval, has been appointed Director again just a month ago: of this I shall tell you sometime later). To-day I hasten to tell you about your scroll. As you requested me I had it insured as follows: ― ○value: U. S. $5,000. ― ○Insurance Company: American International Underwriters’ Corporation, representing Pacific National Fire Insurance Company (home office, San Francisco, which is doing wide business in Japan & highly appreciated by American businessmen in Tokyo). ○For Fire, Burglary and theft. ○For three months (May 9--Aug. 9, 1952) ○Premium for the above: $53.35 The insurance for the transport back from Tokyo to Rome by Air would cost $ 25.00, but for this I have not done yet, because if the scroll be send back to Italy by the diplomatic bag by Ambassador D’Ajeta to Auriti of the Foreign Office in Rome, it would be difficult to insure. For this I shall study & talk with D’Ajeta, when the repairing & remounting be finished. About the repairing & remounting, I have asked the best repairer in Japan to do it, and they began to do the work. Of course, I will supervise it as best I can. You need not be uneasy about it. When the scroll is remounted, the scroll would become a little thicker -- it is difficult to explain this technical matter in this letter, but please trust me that I will do the best possible way for the preservation of the scroll for the future. The cost for the repairing is not estimated yet. I think it is rather expensive, but I shall take care to make it entirely reasonable. About the payment of the premium to be paid to the Insurance Company (American International Underwriter’s Corporation), that is, $53.35, mentioned above, I shall pay it now here in Tokyo in Japanese money. In what way I shall ask you to pay that back to me, I shall write to you later. Perhaps I shall ask you to pay that to the dollar fund, which I have in U.S.A. As my son is staying in Paris for the study of music, I am sending my money to him. It is terribly difficult to buy dollars in Japan. That is the reason, why I have left the remnant of my dollars in America, from which I am sending monthly expenses for my son. This letter is all for the immediate business. When I have more time, I shall write to you what I did in America, how I met John Walker, Frankfurter, & Wildenstein, to whom you gave me letters of introductions, & who treated me so kindly, while I was staying in New York & Washington. It pleases me very much to hear that you are bringing out your old famous works on Italian Painters with 400 illustrations. I am anxious to have them. Of Lorenzo Lotto, as I had very little time at Berkeley, I did not know the existence of Lotto’s work there. So I regret to say that I cannot say anything about it. Of Lorenzo Lotto, I have your old edition, but I shall love to have its new edition. Please excuse me for this scribble. Yours ever, YUKI P. S. Please remember me to Nicky. I am repeating in my memory those happy days at I Tatti this January. |
