Despite the Heavy Artillery Like Rainfall, He Alone Opens the Hyonmu Gate (Danû o okashite tanshin Genbumon o hiraku), Meiji period, dated 1894

Dated 1894 and titled in transliteration 'Danû o okashite tanshin Genbumon o hiraku,' this print depicts a Japanese soldier opening the Xuanwu Gate (Genbumon/Hyonmu Gate) alone under artillery fire, a scene from the First Sino-Japanese War. The subject celebrates individual heroism in the face of overwhelming fire — artillery described as falling like rain — and represents the senso-e genre's emphasis on conspicuous personal valor. Kiyochika renders the figure in a dynamic pose against a sky filled with smoke or shell-burst, using strong tonal contrast and diagonal compositional lines to convey urgency and motion. This is one of three impressions or variants of the same composition in the dataset, suggesting the print circulated widely.