About This Print

Source: In Battle's Light: Woodblock Prints of Japan's Early Modern Wars, Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton, Worcester Art Museum, 1991, p. 74.
In the battle of Asan, south of Seoul, Captain Matsuzaki Naomi led his men across the deep Ansong River on July 29, 1894 to attack the enemy on the other side.  He was hit, but urged his men forward, until he was killed by a second bullet.  It was not the gallant officer, however, but his bugler Shirakami Genjiro¹, who died blowing the charge, who became the first national hero of the campaign.

Toshikata includes all the details that convey the samurai spirit of the modern warrior.  Advancing under heavy fire, undaunted by personal danger, Matsuzaki charged ahead of his men.  The nighttime sky, lit by a crescent moon, heightens the pathos of the hero's bravery and death.  (For a similar print by Toshikata see Captain Matsuzaki Crossing the Anjō-sen.)

¹ The press incorrectly reported the bugler's name as Shirakami Genjiro. His real name was Kiguchi Kohei.

The Predictable Pose of the Hero

Although prints of the Sino-Japanese War purported to depict actual battles and the exploits of real-life officers and enlisted men, the “Hero” almost invariably struck a familiar pose—like a traditional Kabuki actor playing a modern-day warrior. Officers in austere Western-style uniforms brandished swords (the counterpart for enlisted men was the bayonet). Their posture was resolute, their discipline obvious, their will transparently unshakable.

Toshikata himself introduced virtually the identical hero under many different—and always real—names in his war prints. (His Japanese fighting men almost always were in movement from right to left, as if the print were a map and the viewer eye-witness to Japan’s westward advance onto the continent.) Toshikata’s archetypical hero appeared, for example,  as “Lieutenant Commander Sakamoto” on the warship Akagi; as “the skillful Harada Jūkichi” in the attack on Hyonmu Gate (the sword here turned into a bayonet); as “Captain Matsuzaki” in the battle of Ansong Ford; and as “Captain Higuchi” in a near mythic battle at the “Hundred-Foot Cliff” near Weihaiwei.