Photographing Our Troops Fighting at the Fortified Town of Niuzhuang (Waga guntai Gyûsôjô shigaisen satsuei no zu)
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Museum of Fine Arts Boston
- Image courtesy of
- Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Description
This Sino-Japanese War print depicts the visual journalism surrounding the Japanese capture of Niuzhuang in the spring of 1895, showing cameramen recording the street fighting — a scene that places the act of documentation within the composition itself. Kiyochika's war prints, produced for popular consumption during the 1894–95 conflict, draw on nishiki-e polychrome woodblock technique to render battle scenes with dramatic lighting: gunsmoke rendered in translucent grey tones, flames in orange and red, and the architectural fabric of the contested city shown in structural detail. The full title (Waga guntai Gyûsôjô shigaisen satsuei no zu) frames the scene from an explicitly Japanese nationalist perspective, consistent with the propagandistic function of the genre.
More Prints by Kobayashi Kiyochika
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1930
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Spring Dusk at the Tōshō Shrine in Ueno
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Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Frequently Asked Questions
Photographing Our Troops Fighting at the Fortified Town of Niuzhuang (Waga guntai Gyûsôjô shigaisen satsuei no zu) was created by Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林清親).
Photographing Our Troops Fighting at the Fortified Town of Niuzhuang (Waga guntai Gyûsôjô shigaisen satsuei no zu) depicts urban scenes.