Japanese netsuke, Itinerant bookseller

An image of Netsuke: katabori: Itinerant bookseller. Unknown maker, Japan. An itinerant merchant carrying a heavy pack of books on his back, wearing knee length robes and a wide, rounded hat; a gong is suspended from his waist and he holds a mallet in his right hand. His left hand is raised and the object he was holding is missing. The characters inscribed on the back of the pack read `The 66 provinces of Japan' (the last character is not the correct version of province). Himotoshi formed by the stand on the base of the pack. Ivory, carved and stained, height, whole, 7.6 cm, width, whole, 2.9 cm, circa 1800-1868. Edo Period (1615-1868).

Terms of use

These images are provided for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND). To license a high resolution version, please contact our image library who will discuss fees, terms and waivers.

Download this image

Creative commons explained - what it means, how you can use our's and other people's content.

Netsuke: katabori: Itinerant bookseller. Unknown maker, Japan. An itinerant merchant carrying a heavy pack of books on his back, wearing knee length robes and a wide, rounded hat; a gong is suspended from his waist and he holds a mallet in his right hand. His left hand is raised and the object he was holding is missing. The characters inscribed on the back of the pack read `The 66 provinces of Japan' (the last character is not the correct version of province). Himotoshi formed by the stand on the base of the pack. Ivory, carved and stained, height, whole, 7.6 cm, width, whole, 2.9 cm, circa 1800-1868. Edo Period (1615-1868).

Image data

Accession Number: O.78-1991
Photograph copyright © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Aperture: f/32.0
Focal length: 100
Camera: Canon EOS 5D
Photographer name: Image Library; Fitzwilliam Museum
Image height: 1025 pixels
Image width: 475 pixels
Processed with: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.0 (Windows)
Filesize: 302.18kB
Exposure time: 1/30
ISO Speed: 100
Fnumber: 32/1
Captured: 2000:01:02 02:07:04

Key words

19th Century book-seller books bookseller carrying carved Edo Period Fitz_AA gongs hats himotoshi itinerant ivory Japanese katabori male merchandise merchants netsuke pile pile of books robes seller selling stained vendor

Citation for print

This page can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:


            The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024)
            "Japanese netsuke, Itinerant bookseller"
            Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-214957 Accessed: 2024-11-06 00:04:33

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this page on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:


            {{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-214957
            |title=Japanese netsuke, Itinerant bookseller
            |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-06 00:04:33|publisher=The
            University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/api/v1/images/media-214956

Bootstrap HTML code for reuse

To use this as a simple code embed, copy this string:

<div class="text-center">
    <figure class="figure">
        <img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa40/O_78_1991_1_dc2.jpg"
        alt="Itinerant bookseller"
        class="img-fluid" />
        <figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Japanese netsuke, Itinerant bookseller</figcaption>
    </figure>
</div>