The battle for control of the Yellow Sea

The naval engagement at the Yellow Sea — most notably the Battle of the Yalu River on September 17, 1894 — was the defining fleet action of the First Sino-Japanese War and a subject that galvanized the Japanese printmaking industry. Kiyochika's depiction almost certainly shows warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy exchanging fire with Beiyang Fleet vessels, with cannon smoke, fire, and foam-churned water filling the compositional space. His kosen-ga training in depicting light and atmospheric disturbance serves the naval battle format well: the chaos of a fleet engagement under smoke-filtered sunlight called for exactly the tonal control he had developed in his nocturnal Tokyo views. The horizon is likely bisected by silhouetted or flag-flying battleships, with the dynamic diagonal of cannon smoke creating depth. Japanese naval victories at the Yalu were extensively celebrated in print, and this work participates in that commemoration while bearing Kiyochika's distinctive atmospheric sensibility.