The administration must exceptionally and immediately — so that they hardly have time to look and see what is beneath the layers of cambric — create a description of the statue’s general state for the so-called Blue Dossier, they must create a description of practically everything they perceive about it, concerning the possibly most minute details, circumstances, and even impressions; following, however, the sequence specified by the Office of Cultural Properties so that even at the very first, they must provide an account of the material from which the work is created and its structure, the measurements within a hair’s breadth of accuracy, whether the traces of previous restoration work can be discerned, what specific damage has occurred, so as to formulate a plan for its later rectification, and finally what all of this will approximately cost; but then they have to give an account of the delivery process as well, which they simply take from the shared notations of the driver and the abbot of the Zengen-ji, while making note at the same time in what year, on what day, at what hour and at what minute they took possession of the statue, with what protective measures, from whom, and with what designated goal, then follows the notation of the year, month, day, hour, and minute of the unpacking of the crate, Master Fujimori is in his element, he knows this very well, this obligatory administrative sequence, so that his words come sputtering out — questions here, statements there — it all goes into the Blue Dossier, the work-book treated and venerated almost as much as if it were a sacred sūtra, for it is this, precisely this Blue Dossier, which — if, in agreement with a pre-designated schedule, a so-called supervisory inspection is carried out — the highly respected and even more powerful Office of Cultural Properties may examine as the single real evidence of the work that is taking place here, for certainly the Tokyo authorities do not, or at least hardly ever, have any encounter with the work itself; it is only through an acquaintance with the contents of the Blue Dossier that they can form an expert opinion as to what is going on here, if things are proceeding as they should, exclusively from the Blue Dossier, the significance of which is, accordingly, huge; and Master Fujimori knows this better than anyone else, it all depends on this, what is in the Blue Dossier, on what the special committee — they are methodical and of the highest authority — reads from the Blue Dossier; no wonder, then, if the description of the circumstances of the interventions taking place here are nearly laughable in their painstaking minuteness; Master Fujimori dictates, or asks questions; or he asks questions while making statements, or makes statements while asking questions, while the others — crouched and circled around him and the statue, now placed on the floor — very quickly nod, one after the other, in agreement, and mumble and approve, and always in chorus, as they are now, saying yes, absolutely, of course, the most serious traces of exterior damage are visible at first glance on the right side of the chest, on the throat, the arms, the back of the skull, in the figure’s lap, and on the statue’s base, that is true, they all say yes and firmly nod, the restorers in chorus; this must be noted down and this too is noted down in the Blue Dossier; and hours pass, however unbelievable it may seem, literally hours, until they have finished recording this administrative reception in the Blue Dossier, for the diagnosis must determine not only the symptoms but the presumed causes, it is almost noon already when the statue is carefully lifted up and placed onto the hydraulic table, and the restorers set about photographing the statue from every conceivable angle; this too will be part of the obligatory documentation: how the work of art appeared — in its entirety — when it was taken in for restoration; then the procedure is completed, the photographing, for safety’s sake a second camera is used as well, and then with the greatest caution they lift the statue down from the hydraulic table, and take it directly into the fumigation chamber, where the Amida Buddha receives his first so-called general defumigation, devised especially for such cases, for always or nearly always this is actually the first order of business, if a wooden statue is brought into the Bijutsu-in, if even merely for the protection of the hordes of national treasures already undergoing restoration here, because no one can recall even a single case in which damage by vermin was not a factor — at times decisive — in a statue’s material disintegration; insects and bacteria are always a factor, centuries have gone by here, most often the objects in need of rescue brought here date from the Edo or alternately the early Kamakura dynasty; since this is a rescue, it has to be gassed, and with that, after the Inspection, the Registration of the Current State, and the Photographic Documentation of the entire statue, the Operation proper begins, so that just as is mandated by the letter and the spirit of law no. 318 — the Act for the Protection of Cultural Goods introduced on December 24, 1951, and amended or supplemented every year or two up to the present day — give it strong methyl bromide, comes the command from Master Fujimori, when the statue is placed in the fumigation chamber, as it was clear even after the first examination that here, as in so many cases, they are faced with the so-called dry-rot insects of the Lyctidae, Bostrichidae, Anobiidae, and Cerambycidae families, and before anything it needs a good shower of gas, as the fumigation in the chamber is called, first the whole at once; then follows the procedure, in fact the most delicate part, in which they disassemble the Amida Buddha from the Zengen-ji into its minutest components on the hydraulic table, separating the tiniest possible parts from the rest, so that, disassembled pell-mell, the damage to the details thus exposed can be examined and determined, and at the same time specifying — collectively, always with the entire group of restorers, but of course under the supervision of the workshop’s master — the methods, materials, sequence, and timing of the repairs of the damage, always following the letter and the spirit of the law of December 24, 1951, that is to say, never losing sight of the fact that their task here in the Bijutstu-in is not the restoration of carefully guarded national treasures, but their material conservation, not RESTORATION but CONSERVATION; Master Fujimori takes this section of the law from 1951 so seriously that when he pronounces it, he essentially screams; his subordinates are convinced the reason why is that he