「日本万歳 百撰百笑」「長足の進歩 骨皮道人」

"Chōsoku no Shinpo" (Rapid Progress) employs a title phrase ordinarily used to celebrate advancement or development, turned here into sardonic commentary on Chinese military retreat. The word "chōsoku" (長足) literally means "long-legged," and the title puns on the idea of Chinese soldiers making great strides — in the wrong direction, fleeing the battlefield. This woodblock print from the Nippon Banzai Hyakusen Hyakushō series likely depicts troops in flight with exaggeratedly elongated legs, literalizing the wordplay in visual caricature. Such verbal-visual punning was central to the series' method, linking kyōka poetic tradition to the emerging vocabulary of illustrated political humor. Kiyochika's line work in this series drew on Western newspaper illustration conventions, producing compositions more aligned with graphic satire than [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) figure tradition. The accompanying verse by Kotsuhi Dōjin reinforces the irony, and the overall design was sold as mass-market topical entertainment during the 1894–95 conflict.