Russia's acquisition of Port Arthur was primarily an anti-British move to counter the British occupation of Wei-hai-Wei, but in Japan, this was perceived as an anti-Japanese move. Japan emerged as a naval power and Admiral Togo Heihachiro achieved international fame. Unfortunately for the Russian military effort, Makarov was killed on April 13, barely two months into the war, when his flagship Petropavlovsk struck a mine and sank. [39] Wilhelm went on to assure Nicholas that once Russia had defeated Japan, this would be a deadly blow to British diplomacy, and that the two emperors, the self-proclaimed "Admiral of the Atlantic" and the "Admiral of the Pacific", would rule Eurasia together, making them able to challenge British sea power as the resources of Eurasia would make their empires immune to a British blockade, and thus allowing Germany and Russia to "divide up the best" of the British colonies in Asia between them. The Russians suffered 90,000 casualties in the battle. [10], Furthermore, the educational system of Meiji Japan was meant to train the schoolboys to be soldiers when they grew up, and as such, Japanese schools indoctrinated their students into Bushidō ("way of the warrior"), the fierce code of the samurai. Japan became the sixth-most powerful naval force by combined tonnage, while the Russian Navy declined to one barely stronger than that of Austria–Hungary. Four Russian battleships and two cruisers were sunk in succession, with the fifth and last battleship being forced to scuttle a few weeks later. Military leaders and senior tsarist officials agreed before the war that Russia was a much stronger nation and had little to fear from the Oriental newcomer. The massive Battles of Mukden and Tsushima strained the resources of both Russia and Japan, so, when U.S. Pres. Two specific requirements, expected after such a costly victory, were especially lacking: territorial gains and monetary reparations to Japan. The Japanese won the war, and the Russians lost. 27 January] 1904 by attacking the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur, China, in a surprise attack. [91][clarification needed]. Russia had demonstrated an expansionist policy east of the Urals in Siberia and the Far East from the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century.[5]. Japanese expansion in the late 19th and 20th centuries. [26], Wilhelm aggressively encouraged Russia's ambitions in Asia because France, Russia's ally since 1894, was less than supportive of Russian expansionism in Asia, and it was believed in Berlin that German support of Russia might break up the Franco-Russian alliance and lead to a new German–Russian alliance. [99][100] It also encouraged the Chinese who, despite having been at war with the Japanese only a decade before, still considered Westerners the greater threat. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Set in both Russia and Japan, it ends with the Dogger Bank incident involving the Baltic Fleet. The attack heavily damaged the Tsesarevich and Retvizan, the heaviest battleships in Russia's Far Eastern theatre, and the 6,600 ton cruiser Pallada. James Joyce's novel Ulysses, set in Dublin in 1904, contains hopeful Irish allusions as to the outcome of the war. The first war Japan fought was the First Sino-Japanese War, fought in 1894 and 1895. [138] Among these, Herbert Strang was responsible for two novels: Kobo told from the Japanese side,[139] and Brown of Moukden viewed from the Russian side. The Russian Second Pacific Squadron contained eight battleships, including four new battleships of the Borodino class, as well as cruisers, destroyers and other auxiliaries for total of 38 ships. [40] Nevertheless, Tokyo believed that Russia was not serious about seeking a peaceful solution to the dispute. [36] Throughout the war, Japanese propaganda presented the recurring theme of Japan as a "civilized" power (that supported free trade and would implicitly allow foreign businesses into the resource-rich region of Manchuria) vs. Russia the "uncivilized" power (that was protectionist and wanted to keep the riches of Manchuria all to itself). [9] Much of the pressure for an aggressive foreign policy in Japan came from below, with the advocates of "people's rights" movement calling for an elected parliament also favouring an ultra-nationalist line that took it for granted the Japanese had the "right" to annex Korea, as the "people's rights" movement was led by those who favoured invading Korea in the years 1869–73. With the death of Admiral Stepan Makarov during the siege of Port Arthur in April 1904, Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft was appointed commander of the battle fleet and was ordered to make a sortie from Port Arthur and deploy his force to Vladivostok. Their Japanese equivalents were woodblock prints. [74] The defeats of the Army and Navy shook up Russian confidence. The first battle resulting from Kuropatkin’s offensive was fought on the Shaho River (October 5–17, 1904), and a subsequent battle took place at Sandepu (January 26–27, 1905). After the Battle of Tsushima, a combined Japanese Army and Navy operation occupied Sakhalin Island to force the Russians into suing for peace. Conversely, Japan's pre-war gold reserves were a modest 11.7 million pounds; a major portion of the total cost of the war was covered by money borrowed from the United Kingdom,[115] Canada, and the United States. The two neighbours in the Pacific Ocean never signed a peace treaty officially ending World War … On the night of 8 February 1904, the Japanese fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō opened the war with a surprise torpedo boat destroyer[56] attack on the Russian ships at Port Arthur. "Schiff, Jacob Henry". Russia nevertheless remained an Asian power, possessing as it did the railways across Siberia and northern Manchuria to Vladivostok and being closely allied with China. The main historical novel dealing with the war from the Japanese side is Shiba Ryōtarō's Clouds Above the Hill, published serially in several volumes between 1968 and 1972, and translated in English in 2013. [120][121] Another artist, Mykola Samokysh, first came to notice for his reports during the war and the paintings worked up from his diary sketch-books. He had been present there as the 12-year-old son of a battery commander and his novel, Port Arthur: a historical narrative (1944), is based on his own diaries and his father's notes. Two others grew out of incidents during the war. Three Russian armies faced the Japanese—from right to left, the Second (under Gen. Alexander von Kaulbars), the Third (under Gen. Alexander Bilderling), and the First (under Gen. Nikolai Linevich)—comprising 330,000 men and 1,475 guns in all. [148] An Australian author using the pseudonym Charles H. Kirmess first serialised his The Commonwealth Crisis and then revised it for book publication as The Australian Crisis in 1909. His reforms were credited with Japan's overwhelming victory over China in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. The U.S held strength in the Asian region from aggravating European imperialist encroachment. Gen. Aleksey Kuropatkin, Nicholas II’s minister of war, had watched with anxiety the growth of Japanese armed strength. In 1904–1905, Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton was the military attaché of the British Indian Army serving with the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria. Encouraged by activists who championed Korean sovereignty, Korean King Kojong declared himself emperor of Taehan (“Great Korea”). The transformation of Japan from an isolationist feudal state into a vigorous modern power had begun in 1868 with the demise of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of the Meiji emperor. War photographs were also popular, appearing in both the press and in book form. Alekseyev, though a favourite of the emperor, possessed questionable judgment, and he gave the demoralizing order that the navy was not to risk proceeding to sea. The Japanese knew that they needed to destroy the Russian army in Manchuria before Russian reinforcements arrived via the Trans-Siberian railroad. Its struggle with China for predominance in Korea gave rise to several crises and finally, in 1894, to war. However, Tōgō was determined to sink the Russian flagship and continued pounding her, and it was saved only by the gallant charge of the American-built Russian battleship Retvizan, whose captain successfully drew away Tōgō's heavy fire from the Russian flagship. With it Russia’s hope of regaining mastery of the sea was crushed. It took five months and 60,000 Japanese casualties, but Port Arthur was Japan’s at last. [113], Russia's war effort was funded primarily by France, in a series of loans totalling 800 million francs (30.4 million pounds); another loan in the amount of 600 million francs was agreed upon, but later cancelled. The war between Russia and Japan was provoked by strategic issues, the international context and personal factors. After a stopover of several weeks at the minor port of Nossi-Bé, Madagascar, that had been reluctantly allowed by neutral France in order not to jeopardize its relations with its Russian ally, the Russian Baltic fleet proceeded to Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina passing on its way through the Singapore Strait between 7 and 10 April 1905. But by this time in Japan postcards had become the most common form of communication and they soon replaced prints as a medium for topographical imagery and war reportage. By the late 19th century, Japan had transformed itself into a modernized industrial state. [41] The Tsar's advisors did not support the war, foreseeing problems in transporting troops and supplies from European Russia to the East. Over 100 Years Ago, Japan and Russia Went to War nationalinterest.org - Robert Farley. In the Tsushima incident of 1861 Russia had directly assaulted Japanese territory. [49], Tsar Nicholas II was stunned by news of the attack. Shunrō Oshikawa's novel The Submarine Battleship (Kaitei Gunkan) was published in 1900 before the actual fighting began but shared the imperial tensions that produced it. The Tsushima Strait (at the lower right of the Korean peninsula) was the site of the first great naval battle in the 20th century. Japan, with its modernized army and navy, at once won a series of striking victories against the Chinese, who, in the Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 17, 1895), ceded to Japan the Kwantung (Liaodong) Peninsula, on which Port Arthur (now Dalian) stands, together with Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (P’eng-hu) Islands, and agreed to pay a heavy indemnity. [23] During the war, Nicholas who took at face value Wilhelm's "Yellow Peril" speeches, placed much hope in German intervention on his side. April 1", "Text of Treaty; Signed by the Emperor of Japan and Czar of Russia", "Social Prot est in Imperial Japan: The Hibiya Riot of 1905", "Major Fukushima Yasumasa and his Influence on the Japanese Perception of Poland at the Turn of the Century", Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, "Japan's Present Crisis and Her Constitution", "United States of Asia, James Joyce and Japan", U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, "British Naval Estimation of Japan and Russia, 1894–1905", London School of Economics and Political Science, "The Limits of Financial Power: Japanese Foreign Borrowing and the Russo-Japanese War", "State Historical Museum Opens 'The Year 1812 in the Paintings by Vasily Vereshchagin, "War Lasted 18 Months; Biggest Battle Known... Russian Miscalculation", "Ilya Shatrov: On the Hills of Manchuria, Waltz". And amputated limbs danced about or soared through the raucous air[133], Much later, the Scottish poet Douglas Dunn devoted an epistolary poem in verse to the naval war in The Donkey's Ears: Politovsky's Letters Home (2000). [8] In much the same way that Europeans used the "backwardness" of African and Asian nations as a reason for why they had to conquer them, for the Japanese elite the "backwardness" of China and Korea was proof of the inferiority of those nations, thus giving the Japanese the "right" to conquer them.