Netsuke: Japanese Life and Legend in Miniature

204 Pages·1995·24.056 MB·English

by  Edwin C. Symmes Jr.

NETSUKE
Japanese Life and Legend in Miniature

Jacket Illustration
Unsigned nineteenth-century netsuke of Sambaso actor, carved
from boxwood and lacquered with red and gold symbols of
longevity (cranes and pine trees).
Frontispiece
Netsuke, ojime, and inro assembled from eighteenth-century,
nineteenth-century and twentieth-century materials.
For additional information,
see Plate 72.

Edwin C. Symmes, Jr.
NETSUKE
Japanese Life and Legend in Miniature
With a Foreword by HIH Prince Noriliito of Takamado
Photographs by the Author
Charles B. Tuttle Company
Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan
The poem on page 162 is reprinted from An Intro-
duction to Japanese Court Poetry, with translations
by the author and Robert Brower, by Earl Miner, with
the permission of the publisher, Stanford University
Press: © 1968 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Junior University.
The poems on page 114 and 172 were translated
by the editor, Stephen Comee.
I would especially like to thank my father,
Ted Symmes, who has enthusiastically supported my
photographic vision for forty years.
Published by the Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.
of Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan
with editorial offices at
2-6 Suido 1-chome, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112
© 1990 by Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Co., Inc.
All rights reserved
LCC Card No. 89-51714
ISBN 0-8048-2026-0
Book design, typography, and production art
by Symmes Systems, Atlanta, Georgia.
First edition, 1991
First paperback edition, 1995
Second printing, 1996
PRINTED IN SINGAPORE
To my extraordinary wife
Rhena