Catch of the day, a Japanese erotic netsuke in ivory. Maybe the start of a story...
But on the back of the netsuke there's a text in japanese. Someone could help me with a translation?

"Made in China".

Just spit up my morning coffee on the monitor, in a burst of laughter...

Very nice find, Curator!

Made in Belgium should be worst...

I think she is an escapologist having a practise.

It could be a punished girl having a public humiliation. The Japanese writing seems quite old, but I ain't an expert.

I can tell you that it's written in mostly Katakana, the Japanese phonetic alphabet generally reserved for writing foreign words. Otherwise, the Japanese use the Kanji symbols like the Chinese.

Since there is so much Katakana, I'm curious if this item was made as a souvenir for foreigners.

The Katakana alphabet is not very large. You could probably just do a Google search and find the alphabet and translate the symbols phonetically. It may be Japanese writing for foreign words, so you may be surprised that you understand what it says. If nothing else, you may be able to throw it into Google Translate at that point.

Google (and Bing) is able to translate written Japanese in pictures. I did try it on your photo but it was having a hard time clearly seeing the letters.

Japanese can be written horizontally or vertically. Since your writing is a perfect grid, its hard to tell... but if I had to guess,it does look a little more horizontal.

You can get it translated for $5 on Fiver: http://www.fiverr.com/limonata/translate......japanese

Good luck! I really would like to know what it says when you finally get it properly translated.

Made in China by the J A PAN Corporation.

It is a beautiful piece Curator.

Ray

At first glance, I am pretty sure this is Japanese. (I collect and adore Netsukes!) Erotic Netsukes have a long-established background in Japan, with very over-emphasized body parts, especially of the male and female 'parts' and the female breasts. I won't go into the reasoning here, for I might be banned. Give me a bit and I will try to translate into English.

The first line means "Under the City of Aichi later". The rest seems to be in a combo of Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana, (I am not so great at the more complex characters.) The gist of many words seems to be about life, death, burial, and living for the moment. Clearly, the Netsuke characters are doing just that. Rock on, little Netsuke!

We'll find out, nothing resists the bizarrists.

I don't have a lot of netsukes, but this one, is my favorite.
A late eighteenth century netsuke of Gama Sennin, the Immortal with a toad.

My wife couldn't read it. Says some of the characters are Japanese and some look to be Chinese. But none of it makes sense as a written text. Sorry.

But the good news is, you're free to make up your own translation (as long as you're not showing it to anyone from Japan). Have fun.