JAPAN
(deer, antelope, or ox), vegetable and walrus ivory, peach-stones, walnuts, and the skull of the crane (hōten) were also used. Perhaps the finest carving is to be found in cherry-wood netsuke, though those in boxwood derive special beauty from the silky texture assumed by the surface when carefully polished. Walnuts and peach-stones were generally chiselled in low relief, the favourite subjects being semin (Taoist genii), arhats (disciples of Buddha), the Seven Deities of Fortune, Benten and her children, and other motives involving a number of figures. The skull of the Chinese crane, which resembles snow-white wax marked with fine hair-lines, receives a certain mysterious admiration from ignorant Japanese, who, judging by its name,—the heavenly phœnix,—associate it with the fabulous hōō (phœnix). It has always been comparatively rare, and was a favourite material for carving masks, especially that of the jolly, sensuous goddess Uzume, or the fabulous Bacchanalian man-monkey, Shōjō—the blood-red plates on either side of the skull being cleverly brought into the scheme of the carving so as to represent the hair of the divinity or the monster.
The earliest carvers of netsuke were evidently influenced by considerations of utility. They saw that to serve its purpose of sustaining the girdle-pendant the netsuke should have greater length than bulk, and they accordingly took their designs from old legends telling of supernatural or monstrous beings,—flying dragons, lamp-bearing demons, the dragon god, the demon-slayer (Shōki), Kwan Yu (the Chinese god of war), the kirin, the Taoist genii, and such things. Their figure subjects were always amply draped, the nude being tabooed by the sculptor as
178
