Football Tsuba

[Clive Sinclaire]

Gentlemen

I rather enjoyed the recent thread on "unusual subjects for menuki" and meant to show this there so please indulge me here. This tsuba shows courtiers playing football which apparently was a Heian period courtly game. The ball is above the seppa dai and a couple of the nobles are looking up at it.

It is not a great quality tsuba but I have never seen the subject before.

Regards

Clive Sinclaire

PS: Ford, I may not have told you this before, but I once won a prize from To-ken Shunju Press for designing a tsuba. It had to be a modern design that reflected the current age and I drew the classic wave at Kanegawa and put a surfer on it! Simple

[kusunokimasahige]

Excuse me, but could this not be a moon viewing scene ? The object above could be a ball yes, but also a crescent moon of which the blackened part on the left side was polished clear.

 

KM

[Brian]

Clive,

If I may correct you there. Going back into the archives...I believe the direct translation was soccer back then, and not football.

Of course, you sometimes also see the soccer ball being chased by the mythical dragon...representing the nobles who were so fond of the game.

 

Phew..long day standing in queues at the shops..what with it being the first of the month and all....

 

 

Brian

[Clive Sinclaire]

Excuse me, but could this not be a moon viewing scene ? The object above could be a ball yes, but also a crescent moon of which the blackened part on the left side was polished clear.

 

I guess you might be correct but it is a very strange looking moon I think. The previous owner (I bought it in the 1970's) was Commander Alex Newman who was a curator at the British Museum and his catalogue notes say "five footballers under a willow". It was he who told me that it was a Heian period court game. By the way, it was originally bought at Glendennings auction in London in 1948. I attach the ura which I think, depicts the goal,.

Regards

Clive Sinclaire

[kusunokimasahige]

I stand corrected ! The goal is proof enough for me ! Definetely not a viewing platform!

 

Was the ball they used comparable to for instance Mayan and other ancient balls made of leather filled with straw ? In this case rice straw of course...

 

It is a very interesting theme, just like many ancient sports are a very lovely research subject.

Heian and other era courtiers and their highly ceremonial lifestyle have always interested me.

 

KM

[nagamaki - Franco]

Hello Clive, the Premiership should have a day, April 1st, in honor of these origins and dress up all the goal keepers in these ancient style uniforms! I can just see Sir Ferguson directing the Man U charge with an old War Fan from his chair.

[John A Stuart]

蹴鞠

Kemari is a ball game that is said to have come from China to Japan during the Yamato period approximately 1,400 years ago. There are no winners or losers in this game, the objective of the game being simply to pass the ball to fellow players.

 

In Japan, depending on the era of history, Kemari was enthusiastically played within the Imperial Palace, and written records of Kemari games can be seen in ancient texts and documents dating back to the mid-Heian period.

 

During the Kamakura period, in addition to the Imperial court, the warrior classes also engaged in the sport of Kemari, and through the Muromachi period to the Edo period, the game's profile gradually increased, and it was mentioned in various places such as Noh theatre performances, Kyogen theatre, and Edo period novellas.

 

However, after the Meiji Restoration, Kemari declined in popularity and in 1903, with a donation from Emperor Meiji, a society to preserve the ancient game was established, resulting in the survival of Kemari to this day.

 

The performance of Kemari is shown to the public on the occasion of the Kyoto Imperial Palace Public Open Day.

[Chishiki]

My 6 year old son says the string broke on their yoyo. I hope this solves the problem. Mark

[Ford Hallam]

Hi Clive,

 

I remember :D ...I won a prize also, so did Graham Curtis for a violin based design if memory serves

 

cheers,

 

fh

[Jean]

April Fool's day ended at last

[ububob]

Not quite Jean, it depends on the time zone. 6:25 remaining here and 9:25 for our neighbors in Alaska and Hawaii.

[Henry Wilson]

Here they are, running into injury time. They are flagging because Gazza got sent off in the first half. ... Or something like that

 

Seriously, this is a Momoyama period, Nobuie tusba from the Tokyo National museum. The plate is in the shape of the ball (mari or 鞠 ) with a poem inscribed on it. I saw it some ago, can't remember the dimensions but remember it was very thick.

[Clive Sinclaire]

Gentlemen

It may prove of some passing interest for me to tell about Engineer-Commander Alex R Newman who was an Honary Librarian of the Japan Society of London as well as an Honary Curator at the British Museum. As I said, it was from him that I acquired this "soccer tsuba".

 

I met him in the early 1970's as he was a patron of various judo competitions in which I took part and he was 90 years old then. He would tell a tale of his youth, when he used to meet the boats as they came in from the Far East into the London docks. It was "customary" for the dockers, whilst unloading, to let the odd crate fall and break open on the dockside so that they could take a small bonus from the contents. Once, such an "accident", revealed what the dockers believed were "Chinese belt buckles" and they were not interested. It was on this day, that Newman started his tsuba collection!

 

He had several hundred tsuba and I and my girlfriend (now wife) were invited to his house in Hampstead (an up-market suburb of north London) and he would let me buy several tsuba every time I visited. He had also written a book Japanese ART, A collector's Guide, which gave some decidedly unwise advice on tsuba restoration.

 

He had a narrow but high L-shaped workshop and when I first went in it, I saw hanging on the wall amongst hammers, chisels and various other tools, a pristine iron 62-plate suji-bashi. On enquiring the reason for it being there, he said he wore it in case any of the other tools was to fall on his head! It turned out to be by Miochin Muneyoshi and dated 1851. After I had bought and sold it, I found it illustrated in The Manufacture of Armour and Helmets in 16th century Japan.

 

Like I said I bought a number of pieces from him, most of which I still have. These include a round iron tsuba depicting a "monkey showman". that was restored after receiving bomb damage in the Blitz during World War 2.

 

I was very sad that I was unable to buy more of his pieces before he died. He left the rest to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and there they remain in the vaults, never again seeing the light of day - what a crime and a shame on museum culture, when they could have been enjoyed by collectors. Some kind of lesson to us all, I guess.

Regards

Clive Sinclaire

[docliss]

As a follow-up to Clive’s reminiscences of the Newman collection, I was granted access to the Ashmolean ‘vaults’ some years ago, where the said collection remained, sadly neglected and covered in rust. John L.

[Brian]

This makes me incredibly angry. There should be some kind of legal action that can be taken against museums and such, for going against what would have been the intentions of the donor. Of course, this will never happen, but I regard museums such as the one mentioned, as the equivalent of grave robbers and those that tear down ancient artifacts in the name of religion.

Yeah....i am angry.

 

Brian

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

There should be some kind of legal action that can be taken against museums and such, for going against what would have been the intentions of the donor.

 

In the country that is supposed to have given roman laws to the world, such a legal action is not possible.

The whole Japanese collection of Castello Sforzesco has been buried the same (bet much worse) way for lack of funds (and space) around 20 years ago.

The vast majority of the items are "legati", meaning inherited from goodwilling collectors mostly before the war.

[Clive Sinclaire]

There is a suprising degree of ignorance in many museums concerning Japanese swords as well as a reluctance to display them in many cases. Even such institutions as the British Museum, having had over 100 swords polished in Japan , currently have only 3 swords as part of as part of a general display. This is soley because Victor Harris has retired, but fortunately he still has influence and so swords may be viewed by appointment.

I have been loudly and rudely told off by some young female conservator at a museum for handling a sword without gloves, which, as I am very strict on sword handling etiquette, and have handled National Treasure swords in Japan, I found deeply insulting.

I do not believe that museums, outside of Japan, are suitable or deserving places to inherit collections and they are far better off in the hands of collectors who will cherish them. It is up to us to do everything in our power to educate these babarians even if it may seem an impossible task .

I agree with Brian wholeheartedly!

Clive Sinclaire

[kusunokimasahige]

In the ethincities museum of Leiden a few years ago it was discovered that some 8.000 items in the collection stored in the vaults were misplaced, stolen, missing, thrown away and what have you. It took a while to save the remainder of the collection, but only a small part is ever on display, same with the Japanese arms and armour collection.

 

Carlo, dont get me started on Italy, especially not on the Museum world there...

 

As an ancient historian i am disgusted by what i see happening in your country, not only in Pompeii and Herculaneum, but even in Rome itself... Sadly, Unesco cannot step in and take things over. I agree with Brian as well as Clive that some museum people do not have a clue about what they have in their vaults. It is not that every museum refuses to put everything on display however, sometimes, when a curator sees yet another Attic vase or shard of pottery of which he already has 12.000, he will not display it. Those collections are in general reserverd for scholars and research. However with any museum as a scholar you have to battle the organisation at times to gain access to the vaults and artefacts stored there.... And often you will be apalled on the condition of those artefacts, unable to do anything about it.......

 

KM

[chrisf]

I've just read Clive's post with a growing sense of disbelief.it's unbelievable that the guardians and trustees of our national artworks should act in such an irresponsible and casual fashion but no doubt they will always use the excuse of lack of exhibition space/not a popular item to leave them in the vaults.

If they are so disinterested they should sell them and give collectors the opportunity to look after them properly,the cash realised might also stop them bleating for five minutes about how broke they are.

On the other hand I'm not surprised,where I lived previously the Regimental museum had Japanese swords that were grubby and had not been checked for signatures.I met the OIC and explained about how I would be prepared to clean them and research them completely free of charge as a labour of love and to help them.'Blah,blah,guff,yah I think they look JOLLY interesting as they are'.

We're not just grumpy old men are we?