Captain Matsuzaki, Picture of Him Bravely Fighting at Anseong Ford

The 1895 print of Captain Matsuzaki fighting at Anseong Ford—a river crossing in Korea during the early phase of the war—depicts one of the individual acts of tactical courage that the war print series commemorated. The ford crossing scenario—soldiers moving through moving water under fire, the vulnerability of the crossing transformed into an occasion for heroism—was a recurring composition type, the figure of the officer at the river a visual shorthand for command courage.