When Siko Munakata came to America, where he was given a large show at the Brooklyn Museum, I approached him to do some lithographs. Beate Gordon, who was working for the Japan Society, was his interpreter and friend. In his Riverside Drive apartment we all sat and talked. Munakata loved Walt Whitman, so when I said, 'I love Walt Whitman,' and pulled out a picture of Whitman that I carried in my wallet behind my mother's photo-that clinched it for me and him to work together. I'm a Brooklyn boy-and in Japan, Brooklyn means Walt Whitman. Munakata had touched the medium [lithography] once before in Japan with Arthur Flory. He was intrigued to do more. In 1965 we did twenty-four editions and in 1974 we did another twenty. Shiko had very little eye vision and did not speak English; we dialogued delightfully well through the lithographic medium. Through lithography he was looking at the chemistry in his art for the first time, unlike his form, the woodcut. The life quality that he could imagine as he looked into those washes was very exciting to him. Until his death in 1975 he was one of Japan's National Treasures. I had the pleasure of going to Japan and of being with him. I learned the meaning of bowing, the importance of the seal and its placement, of the spiritual moment. ... - Irwin Hollander, quoted in Life and Work: Thoughts of an Artist-Printer, A Conversation with Irwin Hollander
