Illustration of the Naval Battle Capturing Haiyang Island (Kaiyôtô senryô kaisen no zu)

This print by Ogata Gekko depicts Japanese naval operations to capture Haiyang Island in the Yellow Sea during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. The action was associated with the broader naval campaign in which the Imperial Japanese Navy established dominance over Qing naval forces following the Battle of the Yalu River. Meiji naval war prints typically show modern steel-hulled warships in close engagement, gun smoke filling the composition, and the sea rendered with choppy energy. Gekko's design would incorporate the Rising Sun battle ensign of the Imperial Navy against clouds of cannon smoke, with enemy vessels listing or on fire at distance. Unlike Edo-period battle prints depicting armor and traditional weaponry, Meiji senso-ga required artists to develop new graphic conventions for depicting gun turrets, smokestacks, torpedo boats, and modern naval ordnance. The coastal and atmospheric scope of the composition accounts for the landscape subject classification in the museum record. The print participated in the intense civilian appetite for war imagery during Japan's first modern military conflict against a continental power.