Vice Admiral Kabayama Advancing Bravely and Heartily

Vice Admiral Kabayama Advancing Bravely and Heartily is a 1894 senso-e print by Mizuno Toshikata held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession reference at metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55191). Kabayama Sukenori served as Chief of the Naval Staff during the Sino-Japanese War and personally observed several engagements aboard the dispatch vessel Saikyo Maru, including the Battle of the Yalu River in September 1894; his presence at the front made him an unusually photogenic subject for senso-e publishers. Toshikata, a Yoshitoshi student already established as one of the most reliable Meiji prints designers, was prolific during the wartime publishing boom of 1894–1895 and contributed multiple prints featuring named senior officers. The Met holds three of his Kabayama and Ito prints, suggesting a coordinated series or at least a sustained commission. As with the rest of his senso-e output, the visual logic draws directly on Yoshitoshi's earlier model of giving individual figures specific, named valor, but adapts it to a contemporary, military subject. The technical care of the print — careful gauffrage, layered color, and integrated text — is characteristic of the Tokyo publishers' wartime output, which managed to remain artistically ambitious even at high production speeds. The Met's 1894 dating fits the period of Kabayama's high public profile in the months following the battles around the Yellow Sea. Among Mizuno Toshikata's body of senso-e prints, the Kabayama designs are some of the most clearly attributable to a documented historical figure and a documented military moment.