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Filmed in 1897 by French cinematographer François-Constant Girel for the Lumière brothers in the Nihombashi-Ginza district of Tokyo during the middle of the Meiji era. Girel traveled to Japan to assist Inabata Katsutaro, a Japanese businessman who had studied alongside the Lumière brothers in France and secured the exclusive rights to operate their revolutionary Cinématographe in Japan. The film was listed as No. 738 in the official Lumière catalog and was some of the very first moving images of the Far East ever captured. (National Film Archive of Japan.)

One of the earliest active combat photographs of Imperial Japan where both friends and foes are visible, taken by Count Kamei Koreaki, a Japanese nobleman who self-funded a civilian photography corps attached to the 2nd Army to document the campaign of the First Sino-Japanese War. While scouting Shizuizi, Kamei’s unit was caught in artillery crossfire. Instead of taking cover, he set up cameras under fire and capture the photograph.
Situation of the Battle Near Shizuizi
"Those dotted along the elevated hill are a platoon of the 5th Company, 2nd Regiment, commanded by First Lieutenant Mori. The gun smoke in front is from shells fired by the enemy's artillery battery. The several flags visible in the lowlands to the right at the foot of the mountain belong to the enemy soldiers who have advanced closest to our positions."
(Photographic Album of the War of Meiji 27–28, Vol. 1)

One of the earliest active combat photographs of Imperial Japan where both friends and foes are visible, taken by Count Kamei Koreaki, a Japanese nobleman who self-funded a civilian photography corps attached to the 2nd Army to document the campaign of the First Sino-Japanese War. While scouting Shizuizi, Kamei’s unit was caught in artillery crossfire. Instead of taking cover, he set up cameras under fire and capture these photographs.
1st Photo: Situation of the Battle Near Shizuizi
"Those dotted along the elevated hill are a platoon of the 5th Company, 2nd Regiment, commanded by First Lieutenant Mori. The gun smoke in front is from shells fired by the enemy's artillery battery. The several flags visible in the lowlands to the right at the foot of the mountain belong to the enemy soldiers who have advanced closest to our positions."
2nd Photo: Situation of the Enemy Army Rout in the Battle Near Shizuizi
"Those dotted along the elevated hill are a platoon of the 5th Company, 2nd Regiment, commanded by First Lieutenant Mori. The gun smoke in front is from shells fired by the enemy's artillery battery. Those in the lowlands to the right at the foot of the mountain shrouded in gun smoke represent the situation of the enemy troops fleeing in a rout."
(Photographic Album of the War of Meiji 27–28, Vol. 1)

Based on the deployment records of the photographer, Shinjiro Sugiura, the photograph was likely taken between 1921 and 1922 during the Siberian Intervention. The handwritten note translates to: "Armored car temporarily at Shkotovo station.". The Japanese soldiers are in winter uniforms, guarding an improvised armored train car No. 101. On the far right, a Japanese soldier stands alongside two local Russian children.
(Hokkaido University Library.)

In the photograph, Imperial Russian Army officers and NCOs are wearing their standard-issue white summer gymnastyorka tunics, with many displaying their combat medals. They are seated alongside two Imperial Japanese Army officers wearing their dark blue Meiji winter uniforms, as well as a civilian camp interpreter in a haori coat. The Himeji Prisoner of War Camp was officially established on 1st August, 1904. It was the third camp built in Japan to house Russian POWs, following the ones in Matsuyama and Marugame. The camp was eventually closed on 28th December, 1905.
(Hokkaido University Library.)

The original comment by Ensign Yoshimoto Kozo, Navy Bandmaster, captures this scene best: "Prisoners from the Rurik resting on the forward deck of the Izumo. Our soldiers now open their hearts as friends and chat and laugh with them." You can see the Japanese sailors in their summer working whites, many in straw sennet hats mingling with the mostly bareheaded and exhausted Russian sailors who had just been pulled from the sea in the rescue operation ordered by Vice Admiral Kamimura Hikonojo. On the right side of the frame, a portion of one of the Izumo's large naval guns is visible.

Photographs taken by Ensign Yoshimoto Kozo, Navy Bandmaster, from the Imperial Japanese Navy armored cruiser Izumo, the flagship of Vice Admiral Hikonojo Kamimura’s Second Fleet with Yoshimoto’s accounts of the naval actions as the Imperial Japanese fleet intercepted and defeated the Russian Vladivostok Cruiser Squadron in Battle off Ulsan.
(Tokyo University of the Arts.)

Based on their uniforms, the Imperial Japanese soldier (left) belongs to a mounted branch, likely field or siege artillery given the context, distinguished by his braided Meiji 19 1886 attila jacket. The Imperial Russian soldier (right) is a standard enlisted infantryman wearing a Model 1881 greatcoat, as he was waiting to be processed as a POW. The original caption of the photograph was "Russian and Japanese soldiers getting acquainted".
(James H. Hare’s A Photographic Record of the Russo-Japanese War)

Small excerpt from film captured by British cinematographer Joseph Rosenthal of the Charles Urban Trading Company in 1904, showing a mobilization effort of the Third Army in the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, with the prominent banners identifying various local Yokohama neighborhood wards and civic relief societies gathered to cheer on the marching column.
(National Film Archive of Japan)

A compilation of four confirmed combat photographs taken during the daylight fleet actions of the Battle of Tsushima on 27th May, 1905. These photographs were captured by both Imperial Japanese Navy officers and embedded foreign military observers.

The Russian relief force, commanded by Lieutenant General Georgii von Stackelberg, was sent to break the siege of Port Arthur despite the protests of the overall Russian Commander-in-Chief, General Aleksey Nikolayevich Kuropatkin, who felt the offensive was doomed without reinforcements. However, General von Stackelberg was intercepted here by the Imperial Japanese Second Army. Despite an initial Russian artillery advantage on the high ground, General Oku Yasukata used his center as a feint while rapidly maneuvering his 4th Division to envelop the Russian right flank, collapsing their lines and forcing a general retreat. Along the bottom edge of the frame, Russian soldiers can be seen descending through heavy underbrush to reinforce the wide, open skirmish lines scattered across the valley below with the haze of smoke in the distance likely marking various rifle fire.
(MAMM / MDF, International Military-Historical Association)

The truce was called in the immediate aftermath of the brutal 4th General Assault, which the Japanese had launched on 26th November. Following nearly a week of desperate and freezing combat that resulted in catastrophic casualties, commanders on both sides negotiated a humanitarian ceasefire. These heavily contested forts would not finally fall until late December 1904, weeks after these photographs were taken, when Japanese engineers detonated massive underground mines beneath the Russian concrete defenses and stormed the breaches.

This skirmish was a part of the broader Battle of Yangtzuling, where General Baron Kuroki Tamemoto’s Japanese 2nd and Guard Divisions were tasked with assaulting the defensive positions held by Lieutenant-General Count Fyodor Eduardovich Keller’s 3rd and 6th East Siberian Rifle Divisions. Tawan was a naturally strong position and was protected by the obstacle of the Lan-ho Valley (500 to 1,000 yards wide), which was commanded by Russian artillery and machine guns from positions 500 feet above the stream. However, the Russian lines of battle, the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th East Siberian Rifle Regiments guarding the southern flank, were spread across a four-mile front without depth or mutually supporting positions. The Russian defense was further weakened when Count Keller was killed in action at approximately 2 p.m., prompting his successor, General Nikolay Aleksandrovich Kashtalinsky, to order a retreat. Coordinated assaults by the Japanese 4th Guard Regiment and battalions of the 2nd Division eventually collapsed the remaining Russian advanced posts by 6 p.m. This Japanese breakthrough would pave the way for the Battle of Liaoyang just a few weeks later. This photograph was taken by an embedded photographer for the United States War Department, which sent military attachés to the frontlines to study the campaign.
(A. Kearsey's A Study of the Strategy and Tactics of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904.)

Port-Arturets was an experimental submarine minelayer designed by Mikhail Petrovich Naletov at Port Arthur in 1904. Remarkably, Naletov was not a naval architect but a communications technician and former bicycle designer who was inspired to build the vessel after witnessing a Japanese mine sink the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk. Operating mostly at his own expense without official command support, Naletov received crucial help from the sailors of the battleship Peresvet, who helped construct the 25-ton, 10-meter-long submarine and scavenged a motor for it. Designed to operate as a semi-submersible, it was equipped to secretly deploy four naval mines through a bottom hatch or carry two externally mounted 14-inch (350mm) Schwartzkopff torpedoes. Although it successfully passed watertight tests under the command of Midshipman Boris Vilkitsky and was capable of diving to a depth of 9 meters, the scavenged motor proved far too weak for actual sea trials. Facing intense Japanese artillery shelling and the imminent fall of the fortress in December 1904, Naletov destroyed the submarine's internal machinery and scuttled the hull in shallow water, leaving only this empty steel shell for Japanese troops to discover.

In 1925, the IJA established its very first dedicated tank units, which included the Infantry School Tank Corps in Chiba and the 1st Tank Corps in Kurume, Fukuoka. This photograph captures the Chiba unit, which was initially equipped with exactly three British-made Medium Mark A Whippets and five French-made Renault FT-17 light tanks, designated in Japanese service as the "Type Ko". The facilities housing this early armored corps likely evolved into the more famous Chiba Army Tank School in 1936.

The French "Grandes Manœuvres de l'Est" opened in Dijon on 10th September, 1904, engaging 60,000 men in mock attack and defense exercises modeled after Garibaldi’s 1870 operations against the Prussians. The geopolitical alliances of the era were on full display among the civilian and military crowds. As strong allies of France, the Russian military attaché was enthusiastically greeted with shouts of "Long live Russia!". Meanwhile, the Japanese attaché and Great Britain's Major General Baden-Powell, noted in the press as the defender of Mafeking, were received courteously but calmly. The event also marked a notable diplomatic achievement, as a German attaché, Squadron Commander von Hugo, attended the maneuvers for the first time since the Franco-Prussian War. Additionally, China’s Colonel Wang was reported to have drawn marked attention from observers due to his unique uniform. On the evening of 10th September, General Brugère, the director of the maneuvers, hosted a formal dinner for 58 guests, including the foreign mission and local officials. The dinner menu featured an illustration of a dragoon on horseback armed with a lance, alongside a banner reading "Manœuvres de l'Est en 1904". General Brugère sat alongside the senior-most foreign officer, Belgium's Major General Pioch, and Mexico's General Mondragon. Seated directly across from him were Colonel Petar Bojovitch of Serbia and Colonel Lazarev of Russia. During the toasts, a military band played la Marseillaise, and General Pioch led the guests in a "triple hurrah." After the banquet, the officers retired to the smoking room while the band entertained a crowd gathered at Place Darcy with various national anthems.
(Le Petit Journal, 12th September, 1904.)

The French "Grandes Manœuvres de l'Est" opened in Dijon on 10th September, 1904, engaging 60,000 men in mock attack and defense exercises modeled after Garibaldi’s 1870 operations against the Prussians. The geopolitical alliances of the era were on full display among the civilian and military crowds. As strong allies of France, the Russian military attaché was enthusiastically greeted with shouts of "Long live Russia!". Meanwhile, the Japanese attaché and Great Britain's Major General Baden-Powell, noted in the press as the defender of Mafeking, were received courteously but calmly. The event also marked a notable diplomatic achievement, as a German attaché, Squadron Commander von Hugo, attended the maneuvers for the first time since the Franco-Prussian War. Additionally, China’s Colonel Wang was reported to have drawn marked attention from observers due to his unique uniform. On the evening of 10th September, General Brugère, the director of the maneuvers, hosted a formal dinner for 58 guests, including the foreign mission and local officials. The dinner menu featured an illustration of a dragoon on horseback armed with a lance, alongside a banner reading "Manœuvres de l'Est en 1904". General Brugère sat alongside the senior-most foreign officer, Belgium's Major General Pioch, and Mexico's General Mondragon. Seated directly across from him were Colonel Petar Bojovitch of Serbia and Colonel Lazarev of Russia. During the toasts, a military band played la Marseillaise, and General Pioch led the guests in a "triple hurrah." After the banquet, the officers retired to the smoking room while the band entertained a crowd gathered at Place Darcy with various national anthems.
(Le Petit Journal, 12th September, 1904.)

These photographs were taken during the Siberian Intervention (1918-1922) following the Russian Revolution, showing sailors representing the Entente coalition assembled in Vladivostok on an IJN warship, very likely the pre-dreadnought battleship Mikasa. From left to right, the sailors represent the US Navy, British Royal Navy, Republic of China Navy, French Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy, and White Russian Navy with notable differences in their equipment and uniforms.

Superior Private (Jōtōhei) Urashiro Genzō of the Imperial Japanese Army mounted on horseback and wielding a Type 32 1899 pattern cavalry sabre, which was mass-produced and issued specifically to cavalrymen and non-commissioned officers. The "27" clearly visible on his standing collar identifies him as a member of the 27th Cavalry Regiment, a unit established in 1916 and assigned to the 19th Division garrisoned in Ranan, Korea. Given the regiment's operational history, which included deployments during the Siberian Intervention in 1918 and the Manchurian Incident in 1931, alongside his uniform style, this photograph was likely taken in Korea during the Taishō or early Shōwa period from 1916 or later, before the regiment's reorganization in 1939.

One of the three 22-caliber 170-mm Krupp guns of the armored corvette Hiei weighed 5.6 tons and fired a 56 kg solid or 51 kg explosive shell. The photograph was taken in Constantinople, where the ship arrived on 2nd January, 1891, with 69 rescued survivors from the Ottoman frigate Ertuğrul, which wrecked on the reefs near Kushimoto on 18th September, 1890.