1. Hold the sheet by its far edge, tilted, so only the near corner touches down first.
2. Seat that corner into the kagi — the right-angle stop. Press it home against both walls.
3. Pin it there with your thumb, and only then lower the rest of the sheet onto the hikitsuke.
4. Let go from the far edge inwards, not all at once.
Why there is an order at all
The two stops are not equals, and treating them as though they are is the root of the problem. The kagi is a corner, so it fixes the sheet in two directions at once — side to side and up the block. The hikitsuke is a single straight edge, so on its own it fixes nothing except rotation.
That means the kagi has to go first. If you drop the sheet flat onto both stops together, you are asking it to find two positions simultaneously, and paper is not obliging about that. It lands somewhere near, and then you nudge it — and nudging is the thing that ruins register, because you cannot nudge a sheet that is already sitting in wet ink.
Coming down on the corner first turns an alignment problem into a much easier one: you get the corner right while the rest of the sheet is still in the air, and after that the sheet has only one degree of freedom left to worry about.
The procedure
- Check which side is up. Most printing papers have a smoother side and a rougher one, and washi noticeably so. The smooth side goes down, against the block. Work out which is which before your hands are inky, and keep the stack facing the same way.
- Pick the sheet up by the far edge, with a hand at each side, and let the near edge hang lower. You want the sheet arriving at an angle, not parachuting down flat.
- Bring the near corner into the kagi. Push it gently into the angle so it is touching both walls of the stop. This is the whole registration — everything after it is just not disturbing what you have already got.
- Trap the corner with your thumb. Press down on the paper just inside the kagi, firmly enough that the corner cannot travel. Your thumb stays there for the next step.
- Lower the near edge onto the hikitsuke, sliding the sheet along until it meets the side stop. Because your thumb is holding the corner, the sheet pivots about that point rather than sliding away from it.
- Release the far edge last, letting the sheet down progressively from the near edge outwards. Dropping the middle first traps air and can pull the sheet back off the stop as it settles.
Do not slide a sheet around on an inked block to correct it. Once paper has touched ink it has picked up pigment, and moving it smears the print and puts ink where the next colour has to sit. If the placement is wrong, that impression is wrong. Lift it cleanly, set it aside and start the sheet again — a spoiled proof is cheaper than a spoiled block.
What actually goes wrong
The sheet creeps as you print
If the register drifts during the pass rather than at placement, the sheet is not held. Keep a hand on it near the kagi while the baren or the roller is working, or lay a sheet of tracing paper over the top and press through that — which also keeps your hand out of the ink.
A dirty line appears near the stop
The wood between the guide and the cleared area picks up pigment, and then prints it. Wipe that strip when you clean the block, and check it before each colour rather than after.
The far end swings
That is the hikitsuke not doing its job — either you skipped it, or it is too close to the kagi to give you any leverage. The further apart the two stops are, the less a small error at the hikitsuke matters at the far end of the sheet.
If you are printing lino rather than woodblock
The sequence above comes from Japanese woodblock practice, where the paper is damped and laid onto a block brushed with water-based pigment. Most of it carries over to relief printing on lino with oil-based ink, but two things differ and it is worth being clear about which.
Dry paper is stiffer, which makes it easier to place — you can hold a dry sheet by the far edge and it will stay where you put it. Damped washi is floppier and wants more hand on it. So if anything, the lino version of this is more forgiving, not less.
Oil-based ink, on the other hand, is far less forgiving of a slide. Water-based pigment lifts off reasonably cleanly if you catch it immediately; a stiff oil ink will smear across the block and into the next colour. The rule about never correcting a sheet in place matters more with lino, not less.
And if you are printing on a press rather than by hand, the whole question changes shape: the sheet is placed once and then rolled through, so the placement has to be right on the first attempt because there is no adjusting it under the roller. That is a large part of why pin registration is common for press work — the punched tab drops onto the pin in one unambiguous position and cannot be got wrong.
The traditional placement puts the kagi at the lower right. Every source I have found states this as simply where it goes, without saying whether it is a right-handed convention or a structural one. If you are left-handed, mirroring the whole layout seems reasonable to me and I cannot find anyone who says otherwise — but that is my inference, not a documented practice, and the cost of being wrong is a set of blocks cut backwards. If you know better, I would genuinely like to hear it.
Kento works out where both stops go from your paper size, image area and margins, and prints the layout at full size so you can lay it straight onto the block. It also handles Ternes-Burton pins if you would rather register off the block than into it.
Where this comes from
- Hikosaka Woodblock Print Studio, How to Make「ANPAN」on Woodblock Print — an undated instruction leaflet supplied with a beginner moku hanga kit. The placement sequence: tilt the sheet, seat the corner into the right-hand stop, hold it with a thumb, then bring the left edge down. Also the note that the paper has a front and a back, smooth side down.
- Toshi Yoshida & Rei Yuki, Japanese Print-Making (1966) — the roles and positions of kagi and hikitsuke. Read as an extract reprinted by McClain's Printmaking Supplies, which is a secondhand source rather than the book itself.
- Dave Bull, Encyclopedia of Woodblock Printmaking — the warning that the wood between the guide and the cleared area collects pigment and will print it.
Related: how deep a kento notch should be.