Captions on some Japanese propaganda postcards

[ffutures]

A while ago I found a 1904 magazine article on the Russian-Japanese war that included some pictures of Japanese propaganda postcards. Unfortunately the article doesn't translate the text on the pictures. I've been thinking of putting the article on line, and I'd like to include translations if possible

Comments

[whswhs]

Have you encountered the lj community linguaphiles? They're very generous about providing help with that sort of thing. I think they have a number of Japanese speakers.

[alessandriana]

Last I checked that's the community this was posted in, lol

[whswhs]

I just spotted that! I have ffutures on my personal friendslist-I find most of what he posts interesting-and so I saw his name and figured it had come from there, without actually looking to see the source. Brain failure strikes again.

[alessandriana]

Hee, no, I figured it was something like that. Just thought it was kind of funny. :)

[muckefuck]

I started with the second image, since it had the most legible caption, and found a transcription in a Japanese list of reproductions: 日露仁川口海戦大日本海軍大勝利萬歳. I would translate this roughly as "Russo-Japanese Nigawa [River] mouth Great Japanese great naval victory--banzai!" Unfortunately, I can't read anything in the lower-left corner and there's no translation given at the site either.

I would also say the captions aren't Japanese. As you can see, there's not a single kana in any of them. They are in Classical Chinese, which was still widely used in Japan in the early 20th century.

[muckefuck]

Bigger image here, but I still can't read the small characters. I thought 仁川 referred to the Nigawa River in Hyogo, but of course it's actually the Korean city of Inch'ŏn.

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/russo-japanese-naval-battle-at-the-entrance-of-inchon-the-great-victory-of-the-japanese-navy-banzai-nichiro-jinsenk%C3%B4-kaisen-dai-nihon-kaigundaish%C3%B4ri-banzai-130010

[orange_fell]

Wow, I'm impressed!

[ffutures]

Many thanks - that's definitely worth quoting!

[jabarihinton93]

Metric rules.
http://www.finduslocal.com/unpublished/california/la-puente/la-puente-ca-locksmith