Scenes from naval battles in the Sino-Japanese War 1894-95

The first Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 was Japan's first modern war, and its first military action overseas for over 300 years. One notable result of this conflict was a huge burst in popularity for senso-e ("war pictures”), a genre of ukiyo-e which first evolved as a mutation of musha-e ("warrior pictures”) with the need in the 1870s to document the contemporary conflicts which had raged in Japan as a result of the Meiji Restoration, in particular the Seinan War of 1877. Dozens of artists, from the celebrated to the obscure, added to the mass of images which circulated as the Sino-Japanese War progressed (an estimated 3,000 prints were created in just 10 months)—among them was Kiyochika.

The energy and artistic skill of the best war prints are all the more remarkable when we keep in mind the haste of their composition. Some sense of the impressive nature of this accomplishment can be gleaned by an overview of prints by Kiyochika, the most esteemed of these artists, who is calculated to have produced more than 70 triptychs during the brief 10 months of the Sino-Japanese War. Kiyochika’s impressions of the front ranged from the lyrical to the atrocious, sometimes even bringing these two extremes together. Have you noticed the whale in the bottom left corner? :)