The Best of the Japanese Army in Taiwan, Meiji period, dated 1894

This print belongs to a series documenting Japanese military operations in Taiwan that began in 1895 following the Treaty of Shimonoseki, by which China ceded the island to Japan. Dated 1894 in the title, it reflects the overlapping timelines of the Sino-Japanese War's conclusion and the subsequent Taiwan campaigns. Kiyochika's depictions of military action in Taiwan render infantry engagements against a tropical landscape markedly different from the continental theatre of earlier war prints in the series, with dense vegetation and unfamiliar terrain providing different compositional challenges. The series served the dual function of documenting Japanese imperial expansion and demonstrating military prowess to a domestic audience. Kiyochika's training in Western pictorial conventions equipped him to render the depth of jungle terrain and the dramatic light conditions of lowland Taiwan with greater spatial coherence than was typical of the sensō-e genre.