#I LOVE NETSUKE

[azvolrien]

I had a quick look around the V&A once I was done at the NHM. I've been there before, but it's not one I've spent a lot of time in. They have a pretty good Japan gallery.

[mice-rats-daily]

Today's mouse is this mouse netsuke!

[aarlone]

image credit: Netsuke of Two Cats, The Metropolitan Museum Online Collection

[homunculus-argument]

Having no other context for what they are than the ones that I've seen on my tumblr dash, as far as I know netsuke is simply the japanese art of carving beautiful adorable tiny little animal statuettes out of ivory and love.

[darth-mortem]

A lil fic where Ghost and Soap eat taiyaki. A lot of fluff and a little angst, mention of Ghost's family. 870 words.

“Our plane will be in five hours.” Soap said, looking at Ghost, who was lying on the bed in their hotel room, mindlessly flipping through TV channels. 

The lieutenant didn’t respond. He was hellishly tired from the mission and only dreamed of spending the time before the flight in silence and peace. 

“Price and Gaz went for a walk.” Soap continued, sitting on the edge of the bed and placing his hand on Simon’s chest. 

Actually, that was not a very accurate way to put it. It would be more correct to say that Garrick had pulled Price out for a walk, and the captain wasn’t putting up much of a fight. 

“Come on, let’s go too.” Soap urged, making puppy eyes. “Please, Si! When else will we be in Los Angeles?” 

The strict and unyielding Lieutenant Riley could never resist the power of those charming blue eyes of his beloved, and Johnny knew it very well. So, with a heavy sigh, Simon turned off the TV and sat up, swinging his legs off the bed. 

Ghost and Soap were out of the hotel in no more than five minutes. The noisy, neon-lit street overwhelmed the lieutenant, and he pulled the hood of his hoodie tighter, trying to avoid the gazes of passing people. He wasn’t looking around, so he didn’t immediately notice that after a few turns they had found themselves in a completely different place. But Soap noticed. He had frozen in awe, admiring the bright decorations of the city’s Japanese district. It seemed that there was some kind of festival, as crowds of people in colorful attire wandered through the streets, and booths with food, souvenirs, and other trinkets lined both sides. 

“Oh, Si, just look at this!” Johnny exclaimed excitedly, then grabbed Ghost by the hand and pulled him towards the market stalls. 

Simon had a terrible headache. He trudged behind his energetic sergeant, trying to look at everything that Johnny pointed out and share his enthusiasm. Without waiting for additional prompts, he bought Johnny a bracelet with hieroglyphs, a few netsuke figurines of cats and dogs, and an absolutely terrible quality tanto with a bright handle, which would probably will be confiscated at the airport. Johnny was happy, and that was the most important thing for Simon. 

“Lt.! Lt.!” Soap managed to run ahead to the food stalls while Ghost clumsily maneuvered past a flock of teenagers laughing loudly and taking selfies. “Let’s get something to eat, Lt.!” 

The sergeant was curiously examining the different yakitori and onigiri when Simon suddenly stopped by a nearby stall, where on paper plates lay rows of golden and brown fish-shaped pastries—taiyaki. He stared at them, but different images filled his mind. 

Warm yellow lanterns in a clear evening sky. Soft, pleasant music. Happy couples dancing on the wooden dance floor. Beth’s bright curly hair. Tommy’s cheerful smile. Joseph’s tiny hand squeezing his fingers and pulling him away from the dance floor towards sweets stalls, among which the fish-shaped pastries stood out particularly brightly... 

The vendor’s persistent voice was asking something of Ghost, and he barely managed to pull himself out of his memories, randomly poking at one of the pastries. In a minute he had wandered off to the side, holding a fresh and still warm taiyaki wrapped in a napkin. He barely had time to lower the simple black medical mask he wore in the city onto his chin and bite his sweet fish when a Scottish whirlwind flew towards him and grabbed him by the free hand. 

“What is this, Si?” Soap asked, looking curiously at his fragrant fish-shaped pastry. “Is it sweet? Can I have a bite? It smells so good!” 

Riley involuntarily smiled, forcing himself to push the pain and sadness deeper, and brought the pastry to Johnny’s lips. 

“This is called taiyaki.” He said as his restless sergeant chewed on the sweet fish, having bitten off nearly half of it. “Joseph… loved them very much.” 

Soap froze, and the joy in his eyes changed to a mix of concern and sympathy. He struggled to swallow such a delicious treat and tenderly placed his hands on Ghost’s waist. It was clear that he was confused and didn’t know how to react or what to say. Simon sighed quietly, ran his fingers along Johnny’s cheek, and finished the rest of the taiyaki. 

“Do you want another one?” He asked, smiling a little sadly.

“Aye!” Soap perked up. “Do they have them with chocolate? Or caramel? Are there bigger ones?” 

The ghosts of the past retreated under the powerful onslaught of energy and happiness radiating from Johnny. Simon’s smile became genuine and cheerful, and he led his sergeant back to the stall with the fish-shaped pastries, thinking about how his beloved man often acted like a child. 

“Johnny.” He called out when they sat on a bench nearby, and Soap began devouring the taiyaki that his lieutenant had bought him. “Thank you for bringing me out here. This is really so much better than lying in the hotel and watching that bloody TV.” 

Soap just smiled, quickly kissing Ghost with his lips sweetened by chocolate and anko, and popped another pastry into his Scottish mouth.

[nonasuch]

TRICK OR TREAT!

omg I love him. Happy Halloween to this possum specifically!

I hope you both like this very round netsuke.

[pngblog]

love what you do <3 may i request some animal netsuke?

[neutrallibrarian]

Ribcage Cold And Empty (I Need Your Heart Next To Mine)

Written for @madatobiweek 2024 Day 7: Free Day

Fandom: Naruto

Chapter 1 of ?

Word Count: 548

People are born with the ability to draw their hearts from their chests and, if they so wish, exchange them with each other. To give another your heart has always meant a profound depth of love, even if it's just pieces of it given away.

When Madara is given a peace gift from Tobirama, it sets him on a path to rediscovering what it means to give someone your heart.

"Do with it as you please."

With that, Tobirama turns on his heel and strides out of the office without another word. Madara stares at the spot in space he occupied for perhaps fifteen seconds at most, speechless. Then, mechanically, he tips his head down to look at the object Tobirama placed on his desk.

An inro with matching netsuke of exquisite craftsmanship. It depicts a lone koi, pure white with ruby red spots, in a tranquil koi pond. The netsuke is of a dragon, pure white jade with ruby inlay for the red eyes and stripes on its body, coiled around a genuine pearl, soft milk white glistening iridescent. Even the ojime bead is pearl and the cord is braided silk. Defining lines in the pattern on the inro made with maki-e sparkle silver, the thin keshifun lines outlining the intricate details whitish and dull from years of handling contrasting the bright and flashy blue marufun of the pond water. Near the top of the container is a torii gate in gold radan, a beacon to which the little koi is facing from the lip of the pond, heedless of the enamel trees separating pond and gate.

“Oh, that bastard,” he hisses through his teeth, feeling a headache coming on.

It’s been three months since the village was named. Three months after that meeting with Hashirama on the mountain where he and Tobirama came face to face for the first time outside of the initial negotiations. Three months since Hashirama got it into his head to try to get his best friend and little brother to be less antagonistic toward each other.

It’s wonderful to know he wasn’t the one to break first under Hashirama’s well-meaning meddling, and so quickly at that. But irritating now that a peace offering has been given he has to reciprocate in kind or face Hashirama’s suffocating disappointment.

Madara scowls down at the inro, rubbing his sternum. Thinking of Hashirama disappointed reminds him too much of that final battle before his downward spiral, the look on Hashirama’s face when Madara reached for the smoke bombs instead of ignoring the furiously beating heart next to his, the demands to not trust him from Izu—

Madara sets his ink brush down with an aggravated sigh and gulps down his tea, reheated almost to boiling with a liberal application of chakra. Thinking of him just reminds him how cold and empty his chest has become, accustomed to two fire-natured hearts beating within, and how his lone heart freezes over from the absence of his brother's. To distract himself from it, he picks up the inro, turning it this and that way in the light.

It’s pretty, he’ll give Tobirama that. Something that fits his style more than Madara’s, but it’s an acceptable gift. He’s been meaning to get one to hold his identity and clan seals anyway so this is fortunate timing.

He brushes his thumb over the koi, feeling it warmer yet cooler than any other spot on the inro. It must be his imagination associating the koi with Tobirama and tricking him into thinking up the strange temperature difference. He sets it down and picks up the ink brush to go back to work even as his mind spins ideas about reciprocation gifts.

[elsalouisa]

"One evening a notice was posted up begging the guests not to pursue, persecute, or mob the Tzar of Russia, who was staying at Friedberg, three miles off, and who came in every day with the Tzaritza and her children. Poor Alix of Hesse, mortally ill, had turned as a last resource to the healing waters of her native province and her husband had complained that the Nauheimers followed him and her about and stared. This would, if continued, prevent him from coming to that place. It must be stopped. It was.

There was more than fear of mobbing ; there was the fear of the bomb. He went in danger of his life so obvious and so imminent that the craven and businesslike municipality of Friedberg had insisted on his insuring the public monuments of that place at his own expense! It was his chamberlain's duty to disseminate fallacious announcements of his movements. When he was supposed to be going to the baths it was at the Kursaal you would find him ; when it was the riding school it was much more likely to be the lake. I have seen him there, a disconsolate figure, encouraging his boy to sail his tiny boat or being rowed about in one. I certainly never mobbed him. In the same accidental way I often saw the Tzaritza, in black with pearls, going in and out of the baths, her face a tragic mask, stupid, incompetent, haughty, dejected. She looked a lovely fool ; nay, hardly lovely now — the morbid shadow of a queen. And once I saw him through the windows, like glass walls, of a shop full of Venetian glass, Japanese netsuke, and plaques of green jade. The shopman was showing him some objet d'art or other, and the Tzarewitch, whose head did not come up to the counter, was with him. No one else. The door of the shop had been left open, and some sensible German passer-by had shut it. Nicholas II looked up and out — he thought he was trapped ! I saw his face through the beautiful clear glass ; it did not exhibit mere terror, for he was a brave man, but all at once it seemed implicit with a summing-up, a resume of the composite agony of all this race of kings consciously marked down for destruction. His grandfather before him — his uncle — and only the little son with his head below the counter to carry on the monstrous imposthume of Russian Royalty!"

Violet Hunt "The flurried years"

[megafaunatic]

hi lore ^__^ i just picked up the dear prudence collection after seeing you talk about it in a tag and it interesting me, and i’m really enjoying it so far. i was curious if you have any other book reccs, or favorite books you have read this year? it can be any and unrelated to this one. thanks and hope you’re well!

HI ABIBI I LOVE U !!!!!!!!

THANK YOU FOR ASKING I HAVE LOTS OF BOOK RECS

for readers at home abi is referring to dear prudence by daniel lavery in which lavery goes on a lengthy aside about how "love languages" are bullshit. daniel lavery is hysterical and correct as always

some other books i've read and enjoyed in the last year or so (excluding older books like discworld and jeeves+wooster stories, both of which i have been tearing through and really enjoying; also excluding the super popular (gideon the ninth) (you should read gideon the ninth)):

OBVIOUSLY, WHEN THE ANGELS LEFT THE OLD COUNTRY BY SACHA LAMB. READ WHEN THE ANGELS LEFT THE OLD COUNTRY BY SACHA LAMB. see further lore yelling about this book here [literary ya fantasy]

our wives under the sea by julia armfield for a deeply sad lesbian eldritch horror take on submarine disasters. this book will ruin your day (honorific) [literary horror]

the singing hills cycle by nghi vo for a series of novellas you can read in any order! all about storytelling and what storytelling is and does and does to the teller and the listener. also has a super cool jianghu badass side character [fantasy]

y/n by esther yi for an absurdist story about how kpop fandom makes you insane and worse and grad school also makes you insane and worse and GOD FORBID you combine the two [absurdist literature]

witch king by martha wells for book 1 of what has GOT to be I KNOW IT'S A DUOLOGY i KNOW it is the sequel has just not been officially announced yet. but i think she said something at a con about how there's one in the works. THERE MUST BE. anyway really fun and interesting worldbuilding here [fantasy]

beyond ridiculous by kenneth elliot for a look into the world of DIY gay theater in NYC at the height of the aids crisis. REALLY artistically inspiring and also super fascinating just as a history of a scene and a friend group [nonfiction/theater history]

ok this one's both backlist and was very popular when it came out but probably most 25 year old tumblr users have not read it. well they should read the hare with amber eyes by edmund de waal for a deep DEEP dive into the complicated world of rich jewish art collectors + socialites in odesa, vienna, and paris in the 1800s through the early 1900s by tracing the object history of a collection of netsuke from the opening of japan through the changing landscape of central + western europe and then back to japan [nonfiction/art history]

currently i'm reading cancipin by priest which is a space opera danmei that seeks to answer the questions "could it ever be ethical to do genetic engineering" "how do you build a just society" "is it ever worth it to give up your freedom in exchange for safety and convenience" "how do you keep going after the destruction of your entire planet" "what if data star trek were a beautiful young man and part time robot arm who was best friends with the worst gay people in the entire world" [sci fi/romance]

[grandhotelabyss]

What’s your overall judgement on Nabokov?

I withhold an overall judgment until I've read The Gift and Ada, the ones your real Nab-heads seem to consider the magnum opuses. For now: I admire him, I reprehend him. Who is more eloquent, who more clever? Who has more convincingly created novels that are perfect, precious worlds of their own, snow-globes or netsuke, things of beauty and a joy forever? And yet, who is more hectoring and annoying a commentator? A heartless formalist moonlighting as a self-congratulatory moralist, just as his novels' cruelly intricate sangfroid is (badly) offset by the occasional ethical effusion or the showily "subtle" evocation of buried horror. The chess, the butterflies. Ending a short story with an acrostic! "This is not art!" I want to cry. "Art is not a puzzle!" (I have never actually read the short story in question, for the simple reason that I know it ends with an acrostic.) And who has been honored with a more credulous criticism, taking his moral pronouncements as canon, as license to dispense (as surely as any reductive Freudian criticism) with the novels' manifest content? Lolita is a dirty French novel, not a sentimental English novel, not a God-haunted Russian or American novel, and I've never been convinced that a genuine and inflamed eros amorally legitimated by the refulgence of art is not the final turn of its screw. "Oh, but it has such a moral intention," simpers Richard Rorty—and so every pornographer has claimed since the dawn of time. I make no blanket prohibition on pornography, but I am irritated at the double game, the tricks and the chess-moves, the "aren't I clever?," the maddening irrelevance of Quilty, the hijinks instead of just patiently thinking all the way through the problem the way his loathed Mann does so staggeringly in Death in Venice, a novel no less ironic, a novel much more profoundly ironic for being less laboriously ludic. He probably did like little girls, Martin Amis surmised, from a survey of his corpus more extensive than I have made. Largely a bad influence, and inferior, except as a sheer stylist, to some of those he condescended to: Dostoevsky, Faulkner, and, yes, Mann. But to say this feels unfair or wrong somehow to the magician, to the enchanter. Is it not just envy on my part of his world-making power, not just a petty ressentiment? I never come to a final judgment. I always have to go back to be sure. What it is, you see, is that I have a lifelong quarrel with Nabokov, which is not the same as a negative verdict, and is finally, after its fashion, a kind of love.

[vintagefashionplates]

The chatelaine.

The concept of waist-hung items is almost universal across all cultures. For example, the Japanese wore netsuke and inro or the Chinese wore embroidered purses and pouches. Though purses and pouches preceded the chatelaine—they are mentioned in Chaucer—later purses were very small and dainty. The chatelaine was a more useful addition to an outfit.

Some items, like toiletries or precious possessions, were placed in fitted containers called étuis, made of base or precious metals, and when worn on a cord would be called “equipages.” From the introduction of the watch, circa 1510, watches were worn by women on such watch equipages, or on a long chain with watch at one end and keys seal etc at the other end. These chains were worn looped over the waistband or draped across the body.

However, the word “chatelaine” was not used until 1828 when a London magazine called The World of Fashion reported a new accessory, called “la chatelaine.” The medieval chatelaine had worn the keys to the castle, so these new accessories included a symbolic key, as the ladies were wearing them as a symbol of their status as “The Lady Chatelaine” of their chateau.

The next year the same magazine published three fashion plates of ladies wearing chatelaines. The word is now used for earlier examples, though technically these should really be called equipages. During the 19th century, the popularity of chatelaines varied, but it was still a major fashion accessory.

All members of society, from mistresses to maids, wore them. Royalty wore them, though these were more likely to be a watch, purse, or fan example, and nurses carried their necessary medical implements on their chatelaines. The quality of the items and its variety would carry status; each would have a variety appropriate for their needs.

There was also a lot of symbolism used in these accessories, like pansies for thoughts, etc. I have one that’s got crosses, anchors, hearts, and stars on it, as a faith, hope, and charity symbol. I think the anchors were a symbol of hope.

I think this particular one might have even been a mourning chatelaine, because after I bought the item, I put my finger in the thimble bucket and out came this tiny piece of paper with a quotation from Longfellow: “Oppression, and sickness, and sorrow, and pain Shall be to our true love as links to the chain.” It really had quite a punch. (...)

Text by: Hunter Oatman-Stanford Source: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-killer-mobile-device-for-victorian-women/

[fishthegenderwitch]

Saw some netsuke animals and was like, "Man I'd love to have some tiny creechurs to carry in my pocket.." I CAN MAKE LITTLE GUYS. I HAVE CLAY.

hooohoooheeeheehooohooooo

[brainrotbird]

I fucking love netsukes they're so cute

Netsuke of a Rat Grasping a Soybean Pod, early 19th century, Japan.

[amatlcomix]

https://mailchi.mp/comicartfans/comic-art-roundup-916014?e=a646315a7a

TODAY'S FEATURED COMIC ART

WOLVERINE: NETSUKE #3 COVER

ARTISTS: GEORGE PRATT

OWNER: KASRA GHANBARI Paid Member

MEMBER SINCE 2004

This featured cover by George Pratt is a haunting painted image of Wolverine being visited by the specter of his lost love Mariko Yashida. A chance meeting with writer Chris Claremont spawned the idea for the series.

"[I] spent the weekend fleshing out the idea of a sort of ghost story and tying into what I remembered of [Claremont & Frank Miller's] series and Mariko. Someone informed me that she'd been killed so that became the germ of the idea, to take Logan, who was still struggling with her death, to her ancestral home and try to let her go." Pratt recalled in an interview. "Chris had tried to convince me to add the X-Men to the story, which would generate a ton of sales/money for me, but I nixed the idea because I didn’t really want to draw them, but more importantly I didn’t think anyone would believe it. I'm not a superhero artist really and I felt that I wouldn’t really do them justice at all."

[youritalianbookpal]

Ten Questions Book Review - The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal

What is it? Ceramist inherits family netsuke, and decides to investigate the history of his family (the Ephrussy) throughout two centuries.

Who should read it and why? I think this book is perfect for collectionists, history buffs, and all the people in between.

Which genre(s) is it? Non-fiction, biographical.

What is the setting? The netsukes travel from Japan to Paris to Vienna to Japan again, between the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.

How are the characters? No characters, but I loved how the people in the story were described. There is a love for knowledge and research behind this book that is enchanting to me. If they feel so real it's because they are and were real, and it's the magic of this book.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the novel? Again, the most prominent strength here is most definitely the depth of the research. We follow Edmund De Waal through the years, we follow his family through the centuries. And the images evoked, knowing that they come from random pieces of paper or family stories... To me it's so beautiful. A weakness, if so I have to define it, is that I would have preferred even more photographs. We hear all this talk about the netsuke and then... We see maybe two? I would have loved to see more, more family members, more letters, more photographs of how the places described look today. Maybe it's my edition, I don't know, I just felt like I needed something more.

Did I cry and/or laugh? I have cried, I'm not going to lie. Especially for the depictions of anti-Semitism, both in France and during the Second World War in Vienna. I don't think I laughed.

Who shouldn’t read the book? If anti-Semitism and narrations of the Holocaust trigger you, I would not suggest reading the biography of a Jewish family in general.

Any random comment? I would just LOVE to see the netsuke in person.

Which quote stuck with me?

All these cousins can start a sentence in one language and finish it in another. They need these languages as the family travels to Odessa, to St. Petersburg, to Berlin and Frankfort and Paris. They also need these languages as they are denominators of class. With languages, you can move from one social situation to another. With languages, you are at home everywhere.