A small iron jizai (articulated) okimono of a dragon


Meiji (1868-1912) or Taisho (1912-1926) era (1868-1912), late 19th/early 20th centuryRealistically rendered with a long serpentine and undulating body, forged with numerous hammered scales joined inside the body with karakuri tsunagi, the leg joints, head, mouth, tongue and ears each constructed of moving parts, unsigned; with a wood storage box. 53cm (20 7/8in) long. (2).
|ProvenanceAn English private collection.Compare an almost identical articulated iron larger dragon forged with the same construction and delineation of limbs, spines and horns but with gilt embellished flames illustrated in Kuo Hong-Sheng and Chang Yuan-Feng, eds., Mingzhi zhi mei (Beauty of Meiji Period) / Splendid Beauty: Illustrious Crafts of the Meiji Period, Taipei, National Taiwan Normal University Research Centre for Conservation of Cultural Relics, 2013, pp.294-297.Of all the categories of late Edo-period and Meiji-period artefacts eagerly collected outside Japan for the last century and a half, articulated animals have the least trace of documentary evidence concerning their origin and development. Even the Japanese word for them, jizai or jizai okimono, appears to be a post-Edo term. However despite the obscurity of their origins, these displays of Oriental dexterity perfectly matched a trend in Western Orientalist taste in the last half of the 19th century. In the West they were first highlighted in Le Japon Artistique of 1881 which reproduces an articulated frog in three different positions and describes it in detail. However, despite their creation in Japan a century earlier, these articulated animals were only brought back to the attention of Japanese audiences in October 1983, when several examples were displayed in the special exhibition Nihon no kinko (Japanese Metalwork) held at Tokyo National Museum.