Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5

Rotem Kowner is Professor of Japanese History and Culture at the University of Haifa, Israel. A specialist in modern Japanese history with a particular interest in the Russo-Japanese War, he is the author of The Forgotten Campaign: The Russo-Japanese War and Its Legacy (2006), Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War (2006), and the edited volume The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War (2006).

Professional and scholarly

Acknowledgements; List of Contributors; List of Maps, Tables, Figures; List of Illustrations; Conventions; Introduction; 1 The Memory and Significance of the Russo-Japanese War from a Centennial Perspective; PART I: ORIGINS; I. Geopolitical, Economic, and Intellectual Background; 2 Guarding the Gates of Our East Asia: Japanese Reactions to the Far Eastern Crisis (1897–98) as a Prelude to the War; 3 An Invitation to the Aquarium: Sergei Witte and the Origins of Russia’s War with Japan; 4 “The Unknown Enemy”: The Siberian Frontier and the Russo-Japanese Rivalry, 1890s–1920s; PART II: THE WAR; II. The Military Dimension; 5 The Clash of Two Continental Empires: The Land War Reconsidered; 6. The Secret Factor: Japanese Network of Intelligence gathering on Russia during the War; 7 Chaos versus Cruelty: Sakhalin as a Secondary Theater of Operations; III. The Economic Dimension; 8 The War and the Perception of Japan by British Investors; 9 Realpolitik or Jewish Solidarity? Jacob Schiff’s Financial Support for Japan Revisited; 10 The War, Military Expenditures and Postbellum Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Japan; IV. The Cultural Dimension; 11 The Widow’s Tears and the Soldier’s Dream: Gender and Japanese Wartime Visual Culture; 12 School Songs, the War and Nationalist Indoctrination in Japan; 13 Forgotten Heroes: Russian Women in the War; 14 The Dress Rehearsal? Russian Realism and Modernism through War and Revolution; 15 The Scepter of the Far East and the Crown of the Third Rome: The War in the Mirror of Russian Poetry; ; PART III: REACTIONS AND POSTWAR REPERCUSSIONS; V. The Belligerents: Consequences in Japan and Russia; 16 The Impact of the War on the Constitutional Government in Japan; 17 The Legacy of the War and the World of Islam in Japanese Pan-Asian Discourse: Wakabayashi Han’s Kaikyo Sekai to Nihon ; 18 Soldiers’ Unrest Behind the Front after the End of the War; 19 Imperial Russian War Planning for the Eurasian Space and the Impact of the War; VI. Divided Onlookers: Europe and the War; 20 The War and British Strategic Foreign Policy; 21 British War Correspondents and the War; 22 Participant Observation: Germany, the War, and the Road to a European Clash; 23 Perceptions of Russia in German Military Leadership during the War; 24 A Different View: The War in Austro-Hungarian Political Cartoons; 25 A Reinterpretation of the Ottoman Neutrality during the War; 26 The Jewish Response to the War; VII. Rude Awakening? Asia and the Colonial World; 27 Russo-Japanese Negotiations and the Japanese Annexation of Korea; 28 Japan’s Victory in Philippine, Vietnamese, and Burmese Perspectives; 29 The War and the British Invasion of Tibet, 1904; 30 Distant Echoes: The Reflection of the War in the Middle East; Bibliography; Index