PietroParis

Like the weirdly asymmetric hitsu ana? [EDIT: no, that's like the original - sorry] [2nd EDIT: a Tadamasa reproduction was discussed long ago in the forum, but the picture alas has disappeared]

Indeed, he is not in Markus Sesko's genealogy but the theme and the "toshi" suggest some relation.

I'd guess stuff he found while poking around with a metal detector?

Tatsunao on Yahoo Japan:

Hi Thomas, all of these pictures are discussed at length in the last two pages of this other thread: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/34920-a-series-of-fittings-or-how-not-to-build-a-collection/ see in particular this summary: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/34920-a-series-of-fittings-or-how-not-to-build-a-collection/page/20/#comment-398868 The picture that you posted is not a Kirin, unless you use the term in the very wide sense of "mythical horned creature". In particular, Kirin are supposed to have hooves. Based on what transpired from the discussion in the other thread, it appears that yours is rather a 獬豸 (Xiezhi/ Kaichi).

P.S. Do what you want with this additional piece of information: going back to the early posts of this discussion, I noticed that for Joly Kaichi is another name of the Hakutaku. Clearly he was sticking to the tradition of the Hakutaku as a flaming horned lion, which I would not consider "wrong" but just alternative to (and co-existing with) the cow-like, multi-eyed tradition.

I was trying to get to the bottom of the matter while following only the historical sources available. I'm glad that the subject of the tsuba is identified beyond doubt now, I feel less bad about hogging all these pages. As I am also a netsuke collector, I was mainly interested in the Hakutaku business. Thanks to Piers' input, I have now added a point 3bis to the writeup above concerning another possible occurrence of the flaming-horned-lion version in Japanese literature. I am constantly reminded of the fact that being unable to read Japanese is a big handicap in this endeavor, which makes the results inevitably amateurish...

Thanks Piers! that's very valuable for the Hakutaku discussion in the other thread, as it reinforces the idea that even in the Japanese literature there are two "parallel" versions of the beast (a lion-like one with just two eyes and a cow-like one with extra eyes on the sides).

Sorry if I drag this on, I am just curious to tie a loose end. Could anybody please read for me the name of this other beast? Again, it should be the two boldface characters on the top right corner.

And will you admit that it is absurd to claim that early 17th-century depictions of an imaginary animal are "mistaken"? And most importantly, why do you have to turn this into a pissing contest? After finding the picture that the maker of the tsuba was inspired by – which does not seem related to the legend in the "Yunji Qiqian", although I cannot read the text – it is clear that the animal on Bob's tsuba is not a Hakutaku. So?

Solved in the other thread: they read 獬豸Kaichi. Of course if anybody is able to translate the rest of the text please go ahead!

Well then, problem solved! The Wiki page of the Xiezhi does not mention a Komainu connection, and this page lists the Kaichi among "Imaginary beasts other than Komainu". However, a google search for "kaichi komainu" does yield pages that suggest such connection (e.g., "seen as a Chinese equivalent of the Japanese komainu" ). For me the moral of the story is that the only way to figure out which among dozens of similar beasts (in this case, horned lion-like creatures) in Chinese/Japanese mythology is represented in a given artifact is to find the image that the artisan was inspired by. More often than not it is going to be from some collection of sketches such as the one by Morikuni. P.S. the Wiki page linked above also offers another view of the statue found by Bob:

Hi All, A longish discussion has developed in the Tosogu section on the identification of a beast depicted on a Choshu tsuba. I have eventually found an illustration from a book entitled 絵本写宝袋 (Ehon shaho bukuro / Picture Book: Treasure-bag of Sketches) published in 1720 by one Tachibana Morikuni 橘守国, see this link. The animal on the right is clearly our guy. Can anyone please translate the name, which is probably given by the two boldface characters on the top-right corner of the picture?

I'm posting a request in the Translation section.

BREAKING NEWS!!! Trying to identify one of the prints that I did not include in my write-up above because it was not clear whether it referred to the 白澤, I stumbled on what I'm quite sure was the pictorial source for the animal in Bob's tsuba. It is on a page of the 9th volume of a Japanese book entitled 絵本写宝袋 (Ehon shaho bukuro / Picture Book: Treasure-bag of Sketches) published in 1720 by one Tachibana Morikuni 橘守国. See this link. The animal on the right is our guy. All we need to do is decipher the two boldface characters on the top-right corner of the page and we will have our answer. They look neither like 白澤 (Hakutaku) nor like 狛犬 (Komainu). Could please one of the group's Japanese-reading members come to our rescue?

The Baize/Hakutaku discussion has become a bit sprawling, with relevant information (images, links) scattered among different posts, so I will try to put some order in it, including only the images that I could identify. To be clear, all of this is based on naive google searches and google translations, and should in no way be considered "research". 1) The 11th-century Chinese book "Yunji Qiqian" records the legend of the encounter between the "Yellow Emperor" Huang Ti and a talking creature named 白澤 (BaiZe, which in Japanese reads Hakutaku). This creature taught him about thousands of mythical animals, which the Emperor described in a now-lost book entitled "BaiZe Tu". 2) Early Chinese depictions of the 白澤 appear to be scarce. A Chinese encyclopedia named "Sancai Tuhui", from the beginning of the 17th century, includes this page where the beast is represented essentially as a flaming lion (see this link for a translation of the text): 3) The depiction of the 白澤 as a flaming lion was adopted also in a Japanese scroll entitled "Strange Birds and Beasts", conserved in the library of Seijo University. According to this site, the scroll dates to the Edo period and it was inspired by an antique Chinese bestiary named "Classic of Mountains and Seas": 3bis) [Later addition, thanks Piers for help in the Translation section!] Another possible occurrence in Japanese literature of the flaming-horned-lion depiction of the 白澤 – which in Japanese can also be written 白沢 – is in the 9th volume of a Japanese book entitled "Ehon shaho bukuro" (Picture Book: Treasure-bag of Sketches) published in 1720 by one Tachibana Morikuni (see this link). The picture is labeled 沢獣 Takuju, i.e. "The Taku beast". Note BTW that this book is known to have inspired several netsuke models, thus it is not impossible that it was the source for the netsuke shown earlier in this thread. 4) A painting of the 白澤 in the now-familiar form of a cow with human face and additional eyes on the sides was made in the first half of the 17th century in the Ryukyu Kingdom (modern Okinawa) by the court painter Gusukuma Seiho (1614-1644): 5) Later in the Edo period, the hooved, multi-eyed version of the 白澤 was further popularized in famous woodblock books by Sekien (1712-1788) and Hokusai (1760-1849): 6) In his 1908 classic "Legend in Japanese Art" Henri Joly describes the Hakutaku as having " ... an elongated Shishi head, sometimes with two horns, bushy tail, strong forepaws with claws, and flames surrounding its body", appearing to follow the depictions of "Sancai Tuhui" and "Strange Birds and Beasts". [Later edit: or perhaps Morikuni's book, see 3bis] 7) Contemporary Japanese depictions of the Hakutaku generally follow the multi-eyed cow standard. OTOH, contemporary Chinese depictions of the BaiZe are more variable and include versions where the beast is a horned flaming lion. See e.g. this one which appears to be a comics character: To summarize, let me repeat my statements from a few posts above: we must not lose sight of the fact that we are discussing an imaginary beast, and any given depiction of it is just a work of fantasy. It seems absurd to consider the early depictions of of "Sancai Tuhui" and "Strange Birds and Beasts" as mistaken, just because they do not conform with what became the standard representation of the Hakutaku in Japan centuries later. Similarly, the Hakutaku entry of Joly can certainly be considered incomplete because it does not include the hooved, multi-eyed version of the beast, but I would not consider it downright wrong. Having said all this, we are not any closer to knowing what the makers of Bob's tsuba and of the Berhens/Brockhaus/Sharpe netsuke had in mind when they carved their animals. Were they referring to the legend of the 白澤 and using the earlier lion-like imagery, or were they depicting a completely different beast?

Apologies Bob for hogging your thread, maybe we should move the posts related to this particular tsuba to a separate thread? I just wanted to add that one can find plenty of contemporary Chinese depictions of 白澤 BaiZe that look just like a flaming horned lion, without extra eyes: These are of course not relevant to the interpretation of Bob's tsuba, but they attest that the more "generic" representation of the BaiZe has survived through the centuries, at least in China. The website where I picked the first two images (see here) speculates that the eyes and hooves must have been Sekien's own addition. This however seems incorrect because the painting by Gusukuma Seiho shown in the Wikipedia page is much earlier. P.S. I see only now that the third beast has hooves...

Meanwhile, I have found in this page what appears to be a translation of the text on the page from the SanCaiTuHui devoted to the BaiZe: "There is a beast in Dongwang Mountain, one name is Bai Ze, who can speak, and the king who has virtue and bright light will come to the distant place. In the past, the Yellow Emperor went hunting and went to the East China Sea. This beast has words, and it is time to eliminate evil." Anyway, let's not lose sight of the fact that we are discussing an imaginary beast, how can anyone tell whether a given representation is "true" or "false"? If I understand correctly, the image of the BaiZe in the SanCaiTuHui predates the drawings of Sekien and Hokusai by 150-200 years. It would seem quite absurd to consider it "a mistake" that we must correct, just because it does not conform with what became the standard representation of the Hakutaku in Japan centuries later. I would rather say that it is just an earlier interpretation of the legend.

Qilin is an alternative spelling for Kirin. As mentioned earlier, Kirin generally have hooves, but I am under the impression that the term is used also in a wider sense to mean a mythical horned beast. This scuplture does indeed resemble the beast on your tsuba. It would be interesting to know if it stands (or, rather, sits) guard in front of a temple with a companion, which would reinforce George's Komainu interpretation.

Unless you believe that Bob's tsuba is modern, I don't see the point in referring to "modern standards". All we can do is speculate on which legend the maker of the tsuba was referring to, and which kind of imagery he was drawing inspiration from. I did indeed refer to the third woodblock as "a better version of the pictures above". However, there is also the unrelated painting I posted earlier (seen below in context). That beast even appears to have horns, unless those are flames sprouting from its head. I can't see where the Wiki article you quote says that "the Chinese version has many eyes". What it does say is "The common Japanese image generally depicts the hakutaku as ...". Indeed, both of the images that you pasted from the Wiki article are Japanese. It seems to me that a plausible way to combine these contradictory pieces of information could be the following: the mythical talking beast named 白澤, introduced in the Chinese book Yunji Qiqian, was represented in China with a lion-like body, possibly horns, and sprouting flames, with no indication of additional eyes (at least in the two Chinese [*] images we have seen above). This appears to be the tradition Joly refers to. At some stage after its introduction in Japan, the beast transitioned to a cow-like body and gained extra eyes. The legend associated to it remained the same, though: the writing in the Sekien print that you link above reads "Deep in the distant Eastern realms / Did the Yellow Emperor find Bai Ze / it taught him to counter hauntings / Of every type, kind and way" (the translation is from this book). As to the beast in Bob's tsuba, as I wrote above, we can only speculate. Did the maker have access to the older, Chinese representation of the BaiZe, or was he referring to a different legend entirely? The fact that the beast is sprouting flames suggests that it is an exceptional animal, "regular" shishi (horned or not) generally don't do that. [*] A correction: according to this page, the scroll painting "Strange Birds and Beasts" is in fact Japanese, but it was inspired by the Chinese book "Classic of Mountains and Seas" .

It appears that Joly refers to the (earlier?) Chinese beast named 白澤 (BaiZe/Hakutaku). Here is another webpage that contains a better version of the pictures above, and says: " In the book SanCaiTuHui 三才图 会 from the Ming Dynasty 明朝, it says BaiZe has a lion body, two horns and chin hair of a goat or goatee if you want to call it."

The linked page includes also this one, although I cannot see the 白澤 in the description: LATER EDIT: This appears to be a page from a Japanese book entitled 絵本写宝袋 (Ehon shaho bukuro / Picture Book: Treasure-bag of Sketches) published in 1720 by one Tachibana Morikuni 橘守国. But does it really depict a 白澤 ?

Two more regular-eyed 白澤 from the page linked above:

I know about the "other" Hakutaku, see the article by Rosemary Bandini I linked above. However, we are discussing imaginary beings, it is well possible that the same name was used for several beasts over the centuries and Joly just followed a different (older?) tradition. After all the antique painting I linked above does represent a beast with just two regular eyes, which is still named 白澤, i.e. Hakutaku. An image search starting from that painting yields this page: https://zhuanlan-zhihu-com.translate.goog/p/252839771?_x_tr_sl=zh-CN&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp The google translation is rough, but it appears to suggest that the beast acquired its additional eyes when it moved from China to Japan...

I've just found the article of the French tax code that specifies the reduced VAT rate for antiques, I post it here for future reference (it might come useful to you in case you need to argue with the carrier): https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000043002420/ In particular section I.1 reads: "Les importations d'œuvres d'art, d'objets de collection ou d'antiquité, ainsi que sur les acquisitions intracommunautaires, effectuées par un assujetti ou une personne morale non assujettie, d'œuvres d'art, d'objets de collection ou d'antiquité qu'ils ont importés sur le territoire d'un autre Etat membre de l'Union européenne"