Turtle on Lotus Leaf

Thought to have been carved in whale tooth, this netsuke depicts a small turtle sitting on the under side of a lotus leaf. The veins running through the lotus leaf have been portrayed in relief while its wavy edge has been depicted in a most realistic fashion. The ‘himotoshi’ (cord holes) have been drilled in the rear of the leaf to allow the cord to run through the turtle’s body.
The inscription on the rear sides states that Tomiharu carved this in 1792 at age sixty. Enokawa is now known as Gonokawa River and Tomiharu lived in Kakushi (present-day Gotsu City) that was situated on its banks. Seiyodo was Tomiharu’s nom-de-plume as a poet.
Tomiharu’s real name was Shimizu Iwao and he was the founder of the Iwami School of netsuke. Born in Tamatsukuri in Izumo Province, he studied woodcarving in Edo (present-day Tokyo) before moving to Kakushi where he worked as a netsuke artist. Tomiharu often carved long inscriptions on his netsuke; something rarely done by artists in other areas of the country and this became characteristic of Iwami netsuke.
The term Iwami netsuke refers netsuke that were first made by Tomiharu, then his daughter, Bunshojo, and his grandson, Gansui, the style later being adopted by numerous netsuke artists who lived in the Iwami region. Research into Iwami netsuke is probably more advanced abroad than it is in Japan, Hull Grundy’s ‘Iwami Carvers’ lists thirty-five artists while George Lazarnick lists seventy artists belonging to the Iwami School in his ‘Netsuke & Inro Artists’.