「於土城子大尉浅川氏之苦戦」

This battle print depicts the hard fighting of Captain Asakawa (浅川大尉) at Tuchengzi (土城子, in Manchuria) during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). Tuchengzi was the site of a notable skirmish in which Japanese forces encountered determined Qing resistance under difficult terrain conditions. Kiyochika's war reportage prints characteristically frame individual acts of named officers within dynamic battlefield compositions, giving the image the character of an illustrated dispatch. The naming of a specific officer reflects the period convention of honoring identified military heroes in printed form, lending documentary weight to what is also a propagandistic image. Smoke, gunfire, and close-quarters figures would likely anchor the composition, rendered with the controlled tonal contrasts Kiyochika brought even to his commercial print work.