Description:
Sculpture of a Japanese samurai holding a sword with his right hand coming across his left arm, dressed in traditional samurai attire which is detailed with relief carving on the front and back, there is also some light engraving done on the sculpture. Signed on the bottom. Sculpture stands on a nicely finished rosewood modified, oval shaped stand.

Material:
Ivory

Maker/Artist:
Japanese school

Date:
Circa 1930

Provenance:
Patricia & Dennis Della Penta Estate

Size of Artwork:
H. 12 x W. 2.75 X D. 3 in w/o stand

Weight (LBS)
1.15

Condition:
Two age related cracks on body.

History:
Samurai were the military nobility of medieval and early-modern Japan. In Japanese, they are usually referred to as bushi) or buke ). According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character ? was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany persons in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau. In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean "those who serve in close attendance to the nobility", the pronunciation in Japanese changing to saburai. According to Wilson, an early reference to the word "samurai" appears in the Kokin Wakashu (905–914), the first imperial anthology of poems, completed in the first part of the 10th century.By the end of the 12th century, samurai became almost entirely synonymous with bushi, and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai followed a set of rules that came to be known as bushido. While the samurai numbered less than 10% of Japan's population, their teachings can still be found today in both everyday life and in modern Japanese martial arts.