Okimono or sculpture in the form of a quizzical tanuki or raccoon dog. Of hammered, cold-chiseled and assembled iron, the face of hammered silver and the eyes gilt. By Tanaka Isamu (born 1920 –). Showa 31 or 1956.

With a paulownia wood storage box.

This tanuki was made for exhibition at the 12th Nitten in 1956, and it is illustrated in the Nittenshi, volume 19, page 346, number 215. The piece was reportedly purchased directly from the artist’s family.

Tanaka Isamu studied metal arts under Shimizu Nanzan and Unno Kiyoshi at the Tokyo School of Fine Art. He returned to the University (now the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music) as an instructor in 1961 and was appointed full professor in 1978.

For other examples of his work, c.f. Selected Masterpieces from The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, number 92, pages 216 – 217; as well as Kogei – A View of a Century of Modern Japanese Crafts, number 237, page 203.

Tanaka Isamu’s tanuki crouches to glance sideways at us. In Japanese folklore, tanuki were tricksters and shape-changers. Often they took the form of Buddhist priests, a humorously anticlerical vein in Japanese culture. This beast has all the slyness of the tradition along with the natural wariness of the wild. Tanaka stretches his form, balancing the triangular head with an impossibly long and bushy tail. A powerful upper body runs to whippet-like hindquarters. Ribs barely ripple its sides. The softened track of the hammer textures the surface like matted fur. Paused in flight, the animal seems ready to dart off on paws pointed to echo the alertly spread ears and fanning face. Long sharp lines play against rounded volumes and mass. Stripped of all but elemental detail, this stylized tanuki edges just one side of abstraction.

Tanaka Isamu handled a hammer beautifully, sculpting hard iron to soft, mysterious effect. One feels the shadows, the silvery moonlight reflecting off of his face, the tales of childhood reshaped to sleek, modernist effect.

This sculpture must have taken its Nitten audience by surprise. Compelling, it was meant to make one stare back. To pause, and to smile in amusement. Like many of his fellow artists, Tanaka Isamu took a deep breath after the end of the Pacific War. The old precepts of hammering a sculpture in one piece he ignores. So when his peers and judges turned the tanuki over, they saw the hidden seams running down the back and connecting the tail. It didn’t matter. The world and his audience had changed irrevocably from that of 1941. What mattered was to create laughter and elegance. Tanaka’s iconic tanuki stands mute, playfully torqueing traditional Japan into modernity.