Attack at the Site of the Hundred-Foot Cliff

This 1895 nishiki-e depicts the assault on a hundred-foot coastal cliff at Weihaiwei, one of the final fortified positions of the Beiyang Fleet's shore defences. Japanese infantry are shown scrambling up the face of the cliff through gunfire and smoke while naval vessels provide covering fire offshore. The extreme verticality of the subject gave Kiyochika unusual compositional opportunities within the triptych format, stacking figures from water's edge to clifftop in a dramatic diagonal sweep.