Featured Asian Leather Covered Box Signed Need Help Please - WTH???

Okay, well I have this box, cedar lined, tooled leather well done on the lid but WTH is that guy carrying on his back?????!!! It is signed in two places so if anyone can make it out I would appreciate knowing what is says and what that thing is on his back?! My dad thought it was his face but I said he's walking the other way so it's not his face. Its disturbing. LOL The box measures 7" by 3 1/2".

 

The face looks like a Tengu of some type.

 

many possibilities. Dwarf Nose or Pinocchio. or simply an allusion to the meeting of a Chinese mother and child with a "long nose" (as we Europeans with our prominent "pistons" are called).

 

It is after a woodblock by Hiroshige. Look at the Number 13 in the link. The long nosed face is indeed a Tengu mask, I am not sure what the meaning is. The wanderers could be pilgrims and maybe it helps to scare off evil spirits? But that is just a speculation. https://www.hiroshige.org.uk/Tokaido_Series/Tokaido_Great.htm

 

I found this on the meaning of these masks worn as backpacks: https://glam.uoregon.edu/yokaisenjafuda/page/tengu

 

As to the inscriptions, one is the signature of Hiroshige and in the other appears the number 13, so it seems to tefer to the 13th station of the Tokaido.

 

Just in case folks don't want to search, the relevant bit:

The third and fourth slips show one particular use of the long-nosed tengu mask. Here oversized masks are mounted on frames and worn as backpacks. The white clothing on the people carrying these curious items marks them as pilgrims; in fact, pilgrims to the Konpira Shrine on Shikoku customarily carried such backpacks on their way to the shrine. The sight of white-clad pilgrims walking away while a tengu glares back at the viewer was immortalized in landscape printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重’s depiction of Numazu in his Fifty-Three Stages of the Tōkaidō series in the 1830s.

I know only a very little about Japanese imagery - nothing about tengu - but the hats & staffs made me think they were pilgrims tight off.

 

Wow so much info! Thank you!

 

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/92/2e/a8/922ea8774c495992c7a501e16b561a45.jpg



According to Pinterest notation: Station N° 13 Numazu : Twilight

 

You guys are the best.