The Europeans push the envelope far harder with their demands, one thing leads to another, and by November 1895, to the surprise of many who expected Japan to roll over, talks have degenerated into armed conflict.
According to the Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War (
https://www.e-reading.club/bookread...ical_Dictionary_of_the_Russo-Japanese_War.pdf) the three European powers at the time had 38 warships in East Asia with a total displacement of 95.000 tons, whilst the Japanese had 31 warships with a total of only 57.000 tons. This is about the most detailed I could find, other than disparate bits and pieces of info from various wiki articles.
These include, for instance, the list of ships Japan had at the start of their war with China, info on the Chinese battleship the Japanese captured in early 1895, some info on the small German squadron, the page for the Russian battleship Imperator Nikolai etc, though I don't know how accurate they are.
So, anyone have any info on who had what ships where, so we can take a guess how a fight might develop in the short term?