1904 Meiji Japan Navy: Seventy-Seven Brave Soldiers Decide to Die
A commemorative print titled '1904 Meiji Japan Navy: Seventy-Seven Brave Soldiers Decide to Die' depicts the volunteer crews of Japan's Port Arthur blockship operation caught in searchlights, rowing toward the harbor mouth they scuttled ships to close. The title frames a costly, largely unsuccessful naval operation as unambiguous heroism, folding the operation's actual results into a single virtue word.
- Date
- 1904
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Empire of Japan (Russo-Japanese War home-front print); artist Kuroki Hannosuke
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- Empire of Japan
- Medium
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Meiji Japan
- Leader
- Katsura Taro
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Commemorate
- Theme
- War and the military
- Event
- Russo Japanese War
- Techniques
- Glittering generalities
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 28, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (per Wikimedia Commons)
Library of Congress Catalog: https://lccn.loc.gov/2009631611 Image download: https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/jpd/02500/02525v.jpg Original url: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2009631611/
Text on the object
大日本海軍決死隊七十七勇士旅順口閉塞之光景 二月廿四日 勅語 [illegible — dense vertical text in the boxed inset] 日露戦役大殺絶紀念画 第六号 [illegible — smaller vertical text beneath the series title, right edge] [illegible — publisher's imprint, bottom left] 1904 Meiji Japan Navy seventy seven brave soldiers decide die coorpony get in the transportation ships and themself sink is picture stoppaged Port Ryojun
Great Imperial Japan Navy Death-Defying Squad of Seventy-Seven Brave Soldiers: The Scene of the Blockading of the Port Arthur Harbor Mouth February 24 Imperial Rescript [illegible] Russo-Japanese War Great Battle Commemorative Picture, No. 6 [illegible] [illegible] (The final line is the print's own English-language caption, already in English and reproduced above exactly as printed on the object, unedited.)
This is a photograph/scan of a woodblock or lithograph print with dense vertical Japanese text (an imperial-rescript inset and series/publisher information) too small to read reliably at this resolution; only the large title, the date, and the print's own garbled English caption at the bottom are transcribed with confidence. The 'Multiple' language reflects the print's mix of Japanese text and an English caption printed on the same sheet.
