MEIJI PERIOD (LATE 19TH-EARLY 20TH CENTURY), SIGNED SHOAMI SEN AND SEALED KATSU (SHOAMI KATSUYOSHI; 1832-1908)

The artist Shoami Katsuyoshi (1832-1908) ranks high among the greatest of the Meiji period metalworkers. As a boy he had started metalwork making sword fittings under his father Nakagawa Katsutsugu, a retainer of the Tsuyama Matsudaira family of Mimasaka province. He later married into the Shoami family of Mimasaka. His elder brother Nakagawa Issho went to Edo and studied there under Goto Ichijo, but Katsuyoshi remained in Mimasaka thus later to forgo the honors which accrued to the group of metalworkers established in Tokyo during the Meiji period. But his work was to become highly prized both in Japan and at international expositions, and it remains so today.
In Japanese, the praying mantis, or kamakiri, derives its name from kama (‘sickle’) and kiri (‘cut’). With its agility and aggressive appearance, the praying mantis serves as a fitting emblem of the samurai and has remained a popular subject in articulated sculptures like this one.