About This Print

Source: Kiyochika Artist of Meiji Japan, Henry D. Smith II, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1988, p. 92
Pacifying the Taiwanese (Mopping Up Native Rebels near Hsinchu in Taiwan; August 1895)
The island of Taiwan (Formosa) was ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki, but the Japanese met with strong resistance when they attempted to occupy their new colony.  The Imperial Guard was sent in late May of 1895 to put down the resistance, and became involved in a protracted war of pacification that would take almost five months and cost many lives on both sides. 

Kiyochika designed three prints illustrating the pacification of Taiwan, all of them marked by a distinct sense of tropical fantasy.  Japanese soldiers dressed in white uniforms with the distinctive kepi of the French Foreign Legion are led by officers wearing pith helmets.  The lush landscape is accented with palm trees and the sky is painted in tropical tones of orange and purple.  They are the most romantic and exotic of all Kiyochika’s landscapes.  They also reveal considerable wishful thinking on the part of the artist.

The reality of the subjugation of Taiwan was otherwise.  According to James Davidson, an American who accompanied the Japanese troops during parts of the campaign and later became American consul to Taiwan, the Japanese troops were totally unprepared for the tropical climate, “unaccustomed to the heat of the Formosan sun, and dressed as they were in the winter uniform, with headgear affording absolutely no protection against the sun.”  As the summer passed, the most formidable foe was not the Taiwanese resistance, but tropical disease.  By the time the last rebel stronghold at Tainan fell on October 21, the Japanese had lost 164 men in combat and 4,642 to disease; these statistics only heighten the irony of Kiyochika’s idyllic landscapes.  (One of the Japanese casualties was the leader of the Imperial Guard, Prince Yoshihisa, who died of Malaria.)