Horned beast
I am an antiques dealer and a reader of FT since the mid-1980s. I recently bought half a dozen antique Japanese wood block prints of around 1900-1905 in date (the sort of thing I often buy). Four of them are very typical scenes of samurai (or actors dressed as samurai); the fifth is an image of a naval incident from the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. It shows a Japanese soldier dressed in cold-weather gear, again presumably from the 1904-05 war – that war was primarily naval, with the only land-based action the Japanese invasion of Sakhalin Island towards the end of the conflict; this image should be from that specific action.
Behind the soldier are two animals – one is clearly a wolf (probably a Hokkaido wolf, also endemic to Sakhalin and extinct since the mid- 20th century). The other creature resembles an elasmotherium; what on Earth is an elasmotherium (extinct for probably 30,000 years) doing here, in about 1905? Was it a product of a Japanese artist with an interest in palaeontology? The image shows the horn higher up the creature’s forehead that it would be in real life, which I believe is how these used to be depicted in the 19th century – but why is its coat white? I can find no reference to white coats on these creatures – all depictions show them with brown.
Is the artist showing animals he believed were native to Sakhalin – or was it based on an eyewitness account? From what I can learn, elasmotherium were indigenous to a wide tract of eastern Russia and Asia, but their presence in Sakhalin wasn’t confirmed until the mid-20th century. I know quite a bit about Japanese woodblock prints, and the way this is depicted is in a very everyday sort of way, which is an unusual way to depict a Japanese unicorn (or other legendary beast), as military prints tend to be very factual.
Lastly, can anyone read the Japanese script on the picture? This whole thing reminds of the ‘Monster of Troy’ vase!
Brian Mulcahy
By email
Dr Karl Shuker comments:
I don’t think the horned creature depicted is a modern-day elasmotherium – it is generally supposed that this officially long-extinct rhino’s horn was much longer and far sturdier than that of the creature illustrated. It is more likely to be a Japanese unicorn, of which there are many morphological variations in traditional Japanese mythology and depictions. Fossil evidence shows that elasmotherium did occur in Siberia, and while Sakhalin Island is situated just off the Pacific coast of the Russian Far East, there is no evidence elasmotherium once existed there.
A Japanese correspondent of mine said that the script style is very difficult to read, but that from its portrayed appearance the animal is definitely intended to be a Japanese unicorn.