Can you just feel the confidence spewing from me in that title? Well, I’m honest if nothing else. What I do know about this thing is that it’s big, it’s amazing, it’s beautiful, it needs repaired, and that I absolutely had to have it. What I don’t know about it is…well, just what in the mighty blue fuck it actually is.
So here it is. It’s a… display in a display? I don’t goddamn know, but BEHOLD:
I’ve got some glass to replace, some finish to repair, and some fine carving to reseat.
I think that it might be missing something up here, but I have no idea what it could be because I don’t know what this is.
It has stairs and a balcony. Because…reasons?
It has a front door. Because WHY NOT.
So, I’m going to get to work cleaning and fixing the things I can identify. But anyone have any earthly idea what this is? It was sold as a “Netsuke Reliquary.” I’m not sure that’s a thing, and I’ve also never seen a netsuke display that looks like this. Provenance is only as old as the mid-1930’s.
Is it a really bizarre and custom kamidana?
Is it just someone’s amazing art project?
Did people rip hot rails of white lightning off of this thing?
HALP.
Silk & Bones 
We were in Kyoto right before pandemic (I mean, RIGHT, before, if we had been scheduled to return to the US two days later we would have been stuck in Japan for a couple of years-which wouldn’t suck, but still!), and I saw a couple of kamidana very similar to this. I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but just sayin….
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