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

A second impression of the second illustration from Kiyochika's Yellow Sea series, 1894. Examining this impression alongside others from the same edition allows comparison of color registration, the depth of blue gradations across the sea surface, and variations in the rendering of smoke and flame—elements particularly susceptible to variation in rapid wartime print production. Kiyochika's publishers rushed these prints to market within weeks of the battle, and differences across impressions reflect the commercial pressures of serving a public hungry for visual documentation of Japan's military successes. The modern naval vessels depicted required Kiyochika to develop new visual conventions for representing ironclad warships, departing from the sailing vessels and hand-to-hand combat that characterized earlier ukiyo-e battle imagery.