Yanagi
The Willow Tree
By Lynda Cookson
In 1983, the University of Minnesota received a telephone call from a young artist who had had a dream about a Japanese name for a tree. He only knew that the name began with a “Y” and that he wanted to adopt the name as his own. They told him it must have been the Willow tree which is Yanagi in Japanese. I didn’t ask Yanagi his legal birth name. It just didn’t seem relevant.
(Text missing) ……….. had a yearning to travel and experience life. He and Mary decided to go to England, which was fine for six months, until Yanagi was refused a further visa and given three days to move on. On the flight back to Canada, his passport was given to the pilot until he landed safely on his home ground, which he found rather amusing through all the stress!
Back in Canada, this enterprising young man who had already worked as a liftman in Minnessota, running a cage lift a couple of days a week to pay his rent, and then as a parking lot attendant at a university, found himself again employed in rather different earning capacities. This time he was employed frying peanuts to sell, counting buttons for inventory purposes, and painting the edges of sample cuts. For this latter job, luckily he could break the tedium by being allowed to listen to music on his headphones. In the evenings he would return to his big studio at the top of a building where he lowered a bell on a string from his window as the only means of his visitors attracting his attention.
