The Beginning of the Korean Incident (Sono hajime Chosen hottan)

This 1894 oban triptych, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts the opening events of the First Sino-Japanese War in Korea, framed by Adachi Ginkō as the 'beginning' of what Japanese state and press alike characterized as a Korean crisis with continental consequences. The composition stages a confrontation between Japanese troops and Chinese or Korean forces, with figures in Western-style military uniforms and modern weaponry set against an atmospheric Korean landscape. The triptych is among the earliest war prints issued for this conflict, and its sequencing in the publisher's output, as a kind of opening installment of a serial narrative, illustrates how sensō-e functioned as a parallel medium to newspaper reporting in the 1890s. Adachi Ginkō's design emphasizes the new technologies and uniforms of the Imperial Japanese Army while preserving the triptych's compositional logic of staged heroism. The print is part of the Art Institute of Chicago's holdings of late-Meiji woodblock prints and is a useful primary source for understanding how the war was represented to the Japanese public at its outset.