Battie by Nature
David Battie’s eye is turned by a pair of ivory figures, carved in
post-war Japan, whose beauty belies a disturbing past
I SUPPOSE THAT WE, IN THE world of
antiques, are lucky because we rarely
get bored. There is always something
new (actually old) to amuse, edify or
stretch us. Once in a while there comes
an object that makes the hair on the
back of our necks stand up. Such is the
figure of the small girl illustrated
above. She stands, head bowed, in a
smock dress and bobby socks, pregnant
both in life as well as meaning,
considering her, say, fourteen years.
At first glance she appeared so obviously a mass-produced, plastic souvenir
of the 1950s that I am surprised I gave her
a second look when I skimmed past her on
a dealer’s internet site. The inscription on
the base, ‘Kilroy was here’, has an interesting etymology. It was scrawled over
everything during the Second World War
wherever an American GI found himself,
rather akin to a dog marking its territory.
Then the Brits copied it. So ubiquitous was
it, it was chalked on the bricks of our
school playground wall, often
accompanied by a goofy face and hands.
The figure is only 9.5cm high, but the
American dealer swore it was ivory, so I
bought it – although I was fully prepared
to find it was celluloid when it arrived.
There was also a pedigree: the figure
had been brought back from Japan by a
GI in 1946/7 following the Occupation.
And then came the problem. Not that
the price was steep (£120, with the
dealer chucking in a broken one for £50)
but the stumbling block was CITES, the
Convention on International Trades in
Endangered Species, which prevented
the dealer from posting overseas. I
arranged with my brother-in-law (a
professor of cats in Texas) to take delivery
while I sorted out the export/import.
Years went by, letters were
exchanged, forms were filled in, but
the bureaucracy defeated me. I asked
my b-in-law just to post them with a
customs declaration on the box.
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Actually, they were carved just before
the cut-off implementation deadline of
1947 and were legal anyway, but I was
being over-law-abiding. The rules have
since become much more stringent.
I regularly play games with myself,
automatically clicking the payment boxes
on auction internet sites without checking
to see what they relate to, so that when
the boxes are delivered – it’s Christmas! I
have to confess, on some occasions when
ghastly mistakes are made, it turns out to
be Halloween. Anyway, the girls arrived
and I was hooked. They were ivory, very
well carved and were signed. Now to
disentangle the back-story.
After the war, Japan was without food
and without pride. Nothing could be
more unimaginable to the Japanese than
surrender. For some, seppuku, ritual
suicide, was preferable. Japan had been
famed in the USA for its ivory carvings of
which most were exported, but now
there were no tusks. Trade did revive,
but it was in pieces smaller than earlier
carvings and in pieces made for the GI
market and in contemporary taste. For a
‘run’ of identical objects, plastic is the
material of choice, but plastic demands
chemicals and these were unavailable.
The skilled craftsmen who survived the
war, turned their hand to carving pieces
like this one. Sweet though the image
may seem, it conveys a darker side.
Here is an adolescent girl who is very
obviously pregnant. She appears to be
American, but is she? Her eyes are those
of an oriental. And who had left his mark
where he should not have done? Kilroy, in
the form of a GI. The GI who commissioned the girl was about as insensitive as one
can imagine. And what of the carver?
Bitter must have been his tears. In this tiny
figure, a whole period of Japanese/
American relations is epitomised.
Two Japanese ivory pregnant young girls, engraved ‘Kilroy was Here’, signed Masayuki, 9.5cm, c.1946/7