A Picture of Advance Disposition of Troops at Weihaiwei — shingun haichi no zu.

This print documents the Japanese military advance at Weihaiwei during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, when Japanese forces captured the heavily fortified Chinese naval base on the Shandong Peninsula. Kiyochika was among the principal woodblock artists producing war reportage prints during this conflict, and the series he contributed to satisfied enormous public demand for visual documentation of Japan's first modern imperial military campaign. The subject, advance troop dispositions, suggests a bird's-eye or panoramic view of infantry formations moving across winter terrain toward the fortress. Kiyochika applied his developed understanding of light and atmosphere to the battlescape genre: smoke from artillery, coastal fog, and the flat gray light of a Shandong winter all suited his tonal techniques. The print participates in the media construction of Japanese national identity at a moment of significant geopolitical realignment.