Netsuke, wood oni holding rosary, Japan, 18th century

AN EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE (13 CM) WOOD NETSUKE OF AN ONI HOLDING A ROSARY Unsigned Japan, early 18th century, Edo period (1615-1868) Published: Katchen, Arlette (2010) Netsuke 7, vol. 2, p. 413, no. K794.

Boldly carved and remarkably three-dimensional, the muscular oni standing in a jaunty, almost swaggering pose, one hand holding a long loop of Buddhist prayer beads across his loincloth while the other is raised to his ear as if listening intently. The figure is conceived almost fully in the round, with a broad torso, swelling belly, massive limbs, and strongly projecting musculature that give the carving an extraordinary sense of physical volume and sculptural presence. His face is animated by a broad mischievous grin, with bulging eyes beneath arched brows, a broad nose, sharp fangs, and two prominent horns, while the hair falls in thick locks down the back.

The anatomy is vigorously observed throughout, particularly in the pronounced backbone and the carefully articulated clawed hands and feet. Large himotoshi to the back. The contrast between the demon’s fearsome appearance and his solemn handling of a Buddhist rosary lends the monumental figure a distinctly humorous and irreverent character. HEIGHT 13 cm Provenance: Ex-collection Julius & Arlette Katchen Paris. The lacquer is attractively worn, with only traces of the original surface remaining.

The incongruous image of an oni engaged with Buddhist prayer beads belongs to a broader tradition of comic religious inversion in Edo-period art. Its closest pictorial parallel is the popular Otsu-e subject Oni no Nenbutsu, in which a demon adopts the outward trappings of Buddhist devotion. Such imagery combined satire with talismanic meaning: the praying oni became one of the best-known Otsu-e subjects and was traditionally believed to protect against evil and to stop children crying at night.

At an extraordinary 13 cm high, this masterful netsuke is conceived with the mass and volume of a small sculpture, the body projecting boldly in every direction and the deeply modeled anatomy inviting appreciation from all sides. The combination of exceptional scale, almost sculptural bulk, vigorous carving, and wonderfully comic expression gives this early netsuke a commanding presence rarely encountered in the medium. Literature comparison: Compare a related large wood netsuke of an oni nembutsu with a rosary, illustrated in Joly, Henri L. (1912) The W. L. Behrens Collection, Part 1, Netsuke, pl. LVII, no. 4431.