The Advancing Giants: Japanese Art and Propaganda of the Russo-Japanese War

The goal of my research project is to study Japanese depictions of the Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1905 and their effects in promoting Meiji ideals and serving as social propaganda for the Japanese people. In particular, I want to examine media such as postcards and wood block prints that entered mass circulation during the time of the war and were often in the public eye, and their resulting impact on Japanese society. In the first page, I look at the extended panoramic postcard series “The Battle of the Japan Sea” by Saitō Shōshū which elaborately depicts an engagement between Russian and Japanese forces in an effort to describe the appeal of postcard propaganda. In the second page, I analyze Kobayashi Kiyochika’s wood print showing the Russian Tsar Nicholas II being plagued by a nightmare of the Russian defeat in order to better determine the Japanese contempt towards their opponents in helping to reinforce their own sense of superiority.