I came across this Meiji-era woodblock print in the National Diet Library Digital Collections and thought people here might find it interesting.
This is Seikai Bōdō Denshin Kibun, or “Telegraphic Chronicle of the Western Disturbance,” by Yōshū Chikanobu, published in 1877.
Original title:
西海暴動電信紀聞 〔神風連の輩種田政明少将の私邸を襲う〕
It is not a battlefield scene from the Satsuma Rebellion itself. The bracketed description identifies the scene as an attack on Major General Taneda Masaaki’s private residence by members of the Shinpūren. But it belongs to the same uneasy visual climate of the period: political violence, telegraphic language, rumor, and recent events turned into color woodblock images.
What struck me is that the print uses the language of “telegraphic” news, but does not show a telegraph machine. Speed and distance are announced in the title, while the image itself relies on older woodblock conventions: bodies, blades, labels, color, and explanatory text.
Source: National Diet Library Digital Collections
Rights note: Public Domain Mark, as indicated in the NDL IIIF manifest.
More archival-image essays are linked in my profile, if anyone is interested.
