Highlights from the Library

This illustrated serial was produced by the Japanese publishing company Kinkodo during the Russo-Japanese War. They were published for an English-speaking audience during a time when the Western world watched closely as Japan and Russia vied for dominance in Korea.

Titled in English as The Japanese Graphic, though literally meaning “Wartime Graphic,” these issues were a rebranded version of Kinji Gahō Company’s regular news graphic during the Russo-Japanese War.

One of many books published about the Russo-Japanese War in the West with a distinctly pro-Japanese perspective. An interesting inclusion in this volume is plate 27, a reproduction of an engraving dated 1902 by American artist Nick J. Quirk (1863–1940) that is captioned “Fearless Japanese Sailors Firing a Rifle Canon [sic] during Attack on Russian Fleet, Feb. 8, 1904.” The image is clearly a derivative of an original engraving for the Illustrated London News by British artist William Heysham Overend’s (1851–1898). Overend’s 1889 print depicted British naval drills and was titled “Life on Board a Man-of-War: Practice with a Six-Inch Breech-Loading Gun: A Hit!” It was such a popular visual of modern naval warfare that Overend’s print was also the inspiration for the 1894 nishiki-e “Imperial Battleship Firing near Haiyang Island” by Mizuno Toshikata.

This British published translation of a history of the war produced by the Historical Section of the German General Army consists of seven volumes with several appendecies and maps.

German histories of the Russo-Japanese War were regularly very pro-Japanese in tone and became more popular as the nation turned towards national socialism. This volume was written by a former German naval officer turned historian who went on to be a Nazi politician.

This volume was written from official reports of commandants, letters of correspondents, and war reviews, with elaborate treatises on the Russian empire by members of the imperial cabinet and other distinguished native officials and authors as well as on Japan and her institutions by eminent Japanese statesman and leaders of thought. The whole book is richly illuminated with more than five hundred illustrations. Of particular interest are the photographs by Ogawa Kazumasa (1860–1929), who helped develop photography and photomechanical processes in Japan. He is well known for his half-tone and collotype prints and, as evidenced by this American volume, also photographed scenes of the Russo-Japanese War for the Japanese government.

British publishers typically sided with the Japanese, portraying the Japanese as modernized and westernized citizens, on a par with or sometimes better than the Russians. In this volume, for instance, the Emperor Meiji is portrayed in modern military regalia, a sharp contrast to the print of Nicholas II in a luxurious, historic costume at the 1903 ball celebrating the Romanov dynasty.