Ryojun no sankan ni roei shôshi nikkô o haisu zu (Officers and Men Worshipping the Rising Sun While Encamped in the Mountains of Port Arthur)

Published 1894, Ryojun no sankan ni roei shôshi nikkô o haisu zu (Officers and Men Worshipping the Rising Sun While Encamped in the Mountains of Port Arthur) belongs to Sino-Japanese War Triptychs. This design belongs to Gekkō’s imagery of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, a conflict over influence in Korea that ended with China’s defeat and the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Such triptychs circulated rapidly in Japan as a hybrid of illustrated news, military spectacle, and nationalist propaganda; their dramatic narratives should not be read as neutral records of combat.

Port Arthur, now Lüshunkou, was a heavily fortified naval base on the Liaodong Peninsula. Its capture in November 1894 became a major Japanese victory and a recurring subject in celebratory war imagery. The catalog identifies battle, flag, landscape, men, sea, sun, and war among the principal motifs. Gekkō uses their relationship to clarify action, season, setting, and narrative emphasis rather than treating them as interchangeable decoration.

The three-sheet format creates a broad visual field suited to simultaneous action, opposing forces, processions, or panoramic space; the joins between sheets also structure the narrative rhythm.