Statuette of painted metal, depicting the sitter in Japanese naval uniform, including cap. He holds his binoculars in his right hand and the hilt of his sword in his left. The base is inscribed 'The Battle' in Japanese on the front and bears Togo's personal seal on the back.

Togo commanded the victorious Japanese fleet against the Russians at the Battle of Tsushima, 1905, in the brief Russo-Japanese War. The Imperial Japanese Navy at that period had close links with the Royal Navy, on which it was substantially modelled. Togo himself had been a naval cadet in Britain in 1873-74 on HMS 'Worcester' at Greenhithe and Japanese naval officers also attended the Royal Naval College at Greenwich before the First World War. In 1911 Togo represented the Emperor of Japan at the coronation of King George V and took the opportunity of revisiting the 'Worcester', which later became the land-based Incorporated Thames Nautical Training College at Greenhithe. The College presented this statuette to the Museum in July 1970. It was presumably made and given to them in about 1967, probably as one of a fairly numerous edition, since it is a small-scale replica of the large bronze statue of Togo which was installed in that year outside the Japanese naval base at Yokosuka, near Tokyo. It stands there immediately in front of the preserved British-built, pre-Dreadnought battleship, 'Mikasa', which was Togo's flagship at Tsushima.

The statue is a late work of Takashi Shimizu (1897-1981), a notable Japanese sculptor from the village of Haramura, in Nagano prefecture. As a representational sculptor Shimizu was a pupil in France of Rodin's assistant Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), and himself later taught at Musashino Art University, Japan. In 1978 he gave a large collection of his work to Haramura, housed there since 1980 in the Yatsugatake Museum. He is also represented in the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art.