Lion-fish

Carved from mammoth tusk, this Ryusa-style netsuke captures the exotic allure and latent danger of the ocean’s twilight realm. A Lion-fish (ミノカサゴ — minokasago), renowned for its venomous, feather-like fins, glides in elegant suspension—its pose both serene and alert, a predator cloaked in beauty.

The body is richly saturated with walnut ink, forming vivid, undulating stripes. Black spots, applied with silver nitrate and a heated needle, echo the fish’s natural camouflage and warning display. Its eyes—set with amber, black buffalo horn, and mottled shell—radiate a piercing, sentient intensity, as if watching from the reef’s shadowed edge.

Delicate openwork carving lends the composition a sense of weightlessness, allowing light to filter through the fins like currents through coral. The himotoshi (cord passage) is seamlessly integrated into one of the fins, opposite the main aperture—an elegant nod to the piece’s functional heritage.

This work was  published in the prestigious International Netsuke Society Journal (Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2008).

Diameter: 5 cm. Thickness: 1.2 cm. Material: Mammoth tusk.

2006. UK, private collection.