With a self-consciousness
that is both touching and preposterous, an oni sits like an obedient child who
has been sent to clean up. This display of grooming shows the rough and a powerfully
muscled oni bending to his mirror as he dutifully pulls a comb through his hair.
The characterization is thorough; the oni has horns, a bristly beard and eyebrows,
an all too human and realistically fleshy body that sprouts wild wiry hairs on
the chest, over the arms and clawed hands, the legs and the clawed feet, one of
which holds up the mirror in its talons. He is wearing bracelets, anklets and
a garment made of striped animal hide with a loincloth tied into a soft bow at
the back.
While
the subject and situation are told on the front of the piece, the back of this
netsuke is a marvel of exceptional artistry, with the spine wonderfully defined,
the ribs spreading out from it, the masterful texturing of the animal hide garment
with the wrapped bow, the thoroughness of execution, to the claws of the foot
held underneath the oni, and upward to the crowning achievement, the glorious
fall of curled and layered hair that falls suavely to the oni’s back. With this
attribute it is understood that, oni or not, this being has an impressively cultivated
coiffure. This is a scene which is amusing in its own right, but equally cautionary
when applied to human affairs, wherein much attention is often given to refinements
which nevertheless do nothing to alter one’s true character.
