Great Victory of Our Forces at the Battle of the Yellow Sea--First Illustration (Kôkai ni okeru wagagun no daishô, dai ichi zu)

The first print in Kiyochika's four-part series on the Battle of the Yellow Sea (September 17, 1894), this composition likely establishes the opening engagement between the Japanese Combined Fleet and China's Beiyang Fleet in the waters northwest of the Korean peninsula. As an opening image in the series, it may depict the initial formation and first exchange of fire between the opposing fleets. Kiyochika rendered the ironclad warships with attention to their modern silhouettes—smokestacks, armored turrets, and naval pennants—while applying the diffused atmospheric light he had developed in his earlier kōsen-ga. The horizontal expanse of open sea provided compositional scope for conveying the scale of a modern naval engagement, contrasting dramatically with the enclosed urban scenes of his Meiji Tokyo prints.