About the artist
Ginko Adachi was an ukiyo-e printmaker and illustrator known for his yakusha-e, or "actor portraits," as well as for his senso-e, or "war prints." Born as Heishichi Adachi, Ginko studied with the Western-style painter Horyu Goseda before turning to woodblock printmaking and the Utagawa School in the 1870s. He completed his first print in 1873 and continued to produce new designs across a wide variety of genres through 1908. During the Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895), Ginko served as a war correspondent, producing scenes from the front in the triptych format for an eager audience back home. In 1889, Ginko's satirical edge proved to be too much for Meiji authorities when he portrayed the emperor as a skeleton in one of his illustrations. Both Ginko and the editor and printer for the publication were sentenced to a year in prison and a fifty-yen fine.