Small, tough, precise: History as netsuke

Netsuke are Japanese ornaments no bigger than a matchbox, finely detailed, light but tough, carved in wood and ivory. Their subjects are wide-ranging and unexpected. Animals, of course: a brindled wolf, a ruffled dragon leaning on a rock, a stag scratching its ear with a hind leg. People caught in mid-movement: two acrobats tumbling, a cooper making a barrel, a woman bathing in a tub. Still objects: a medlar fruit ripe to the point of deliquescence, a bundle of kindling tied with a rope. So much care and effort invested in a very small object that will be used as a toggle on a cloth bag, or suspended from the sash of a kimono. They are so easily lost, left in the pocket of a jacket that gets sent to the dry-cleaners, thrown away with a crumpled receipt. These objects, so losable, are all that remain of a vast fortune.

But this is not one of those tales of bygone eras and lost glamour. What could’ve been another foray into the nostalgia industry was averted when the netsuke fell into the hands of a potter. For who would understand more fully how things are made, handled and handed on than someone who makes things?

“Melancholy… is a sort of default vagueness, a get-out clause, a smothering lack of focus,” writes the renowned ceramic artist Edmund de Waal. “And this netsuke is a small, tough explosion of exactitude. It deserves this kind of exactitude in return.” De Waal’s book The Hare With Amber Eyes is as precise as the netsuke of the title.

In 1994 De Waal inherited a collection of 264 netsuke from his great-uncle Iggie, who had lived in Tokyo for half a century. De Waal had become acquainted with the collection when he came to Japan as an exchange student and spent one afternoon a week with Iggie. He knew his family history, knew that they had been fantastically wealthy. Now he had to find out how the netsuke had come into their possession, whose hands had touched them, and how they made their way back to Japan. He wanted to know what the netsuke had witnessed.

The author cleared his schedule for three months of research and ended up spending two years. He began by visiting the house in Paris where his relative Charles Ephrussi, the man who’d bought the netsuke, had lived. Charles was the grandson of Charles Joachim Efrussi, who started a grain-trading business in Odessa on the border of imperial Russia. The small trading firm grew into the world’s largest grain exporter. The spelling of their name was changed and the sons deployed to Paris and Vienna to oversee the family’s business interests.

Charles the Parisian Ephrussi was a patron of the arts, a collector and writer who championed the Impressionists.He is the man in Renoir’s famous painting “The Luncheon of the Boating Party” — standing at the back, in the top hat and black suit. Charles was also the model for Proust’s Swann. In Paris in the 1870s Japan was all the rage — after centuries of isolation Japan had opened diplomatic and trade relations with the West, and there was a clamoring for Japanese art, robes and bibelots. Such as the 264 netsuke which Charles purchased from a dealer, angering his rival Edmond de Goncourt, who called him a dirty Jew.

It is tempting to go on about Charles’ life in Paris, his affairs, his “vagabonding” (searching for objects for his collection), the upheavals in the art world, the rampant anti-Semitism that came to a head with the Dreyfus Affair. The Ephrussi of Paris were “loathed as upstarts, feted as patrons.” They believed themselves French; many disagreed violently. It was a pattern that would be repeated in Vienna, where the netsuke (and the author) would go next.

In 1899 Charles gave the netsuke to his cousin Viktor as a wedding present. Viktor, an ardent reader and book collector, had found himself in charge of the family business when his eldest brother eloped with their father’s mistress. He did his duty. Viktor married the beautiful Emmy, who was 21 years his junior. She would have many lovers; he would have his books.

The netsuke lived in their black vitrine in Emmy’s dressing-room where the children — Elisabeth the author’s grandmother, Gisela, great-uncle Iggie, and Rudolf — would visit their mother while she prepared to go out. As Anna the maid attended to Emmy’s outfits (the fashion of the day often required that the dress be sewn onto the wearer) and coiffure, the children would each choose a netsuke and present it to their mother, who would tell them a story about it. They were not precious objects locked away in a glass case; they were handled, they contained stories.

Outside the vitrine the world was in tumult. The Belle Epoque crashed to an end. World War I was fought. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken, the map of the world redrawn. The Nazis came to power. World War II erupted. Everything was “Aryanised,” dispersed, stolen, gone.

The Hare With Amber Eyes is a riveting family history and a meditation on identity. There are many books in this category, and the best ones are said to “bring history to life.” De Waal’s book not only animates the past, he makes it touchable.

To read The Hare With Amber Eyes is to hold a netsuke in the palm of your hand, turn it over repeatedly and explore the surfaces with your fingertips. You rub the gritty dust of Odessa between thumb and forefinger as the Ephrussi condemn the pogroms and threaten to flood the Russian markets with grain. You draw the curtains over the ridiculous Renaissance bed with the “high canopy with putti embowered in intricate patterns…” while they fight duels to protect their family’s honor. You run your hands over the dark-green velvet lining the vitrine as the neighbors, good citizens of Vienna, burst into the house, ransack the rooms and push the Louis XVI desk over the handrail so it shatters on the stones of the courtyard.

You read a letter on paper that is nearly transparent, bearing dreadful news of cousins in the death camps. You reach into Anna’s pocket and find all that remains.

There are no arias over what has been lost. Rage at so much injustice cannot be avoided but, being futile, is set aside. The Hare With Amber Eyes is heartbreaking without being sentimental, exquisite without being precious. In uncovering a hidden history, Edmund de Waal has crafted a passionate defense of objects. In this digital age where reality has gone virtual and people have 5,000 friends they have never shaken hands with, he reminds us of the power of touch.