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| ABSTRACTS Re-imagining
Culture in the Russo-Japanese War Patriotism and Despondency: Japanese Society
at War, 1904-5 The Russo-Japanese War in Russian Cultural
Consciousness Japanese Literary Responses to the Russo-Japanese
War Gods, Numbers, and the War: Tsushima
Images in the Works of Velimir Khlebnikov Consuming Nationalism: Patriotic Objects
of Desire during the Russo-Japanese War Looking for Poland in Japan: Polish art world
responses to the Russo-Japanese War Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Origins
of the War with Japan Patriotism and
Despondency: Japanese Society at War, 1904-5 How did the Japanese public respond to the outbreak of the war in 1904? The imminent prospect of a war against Russia ignited a fierce domestic debate, splitting the country into pro-war and anti-war factions. As in any society at war, Japanese society similarly revealed an uneasy mixture of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, the Japanese felt proud and patriotic as an Asian nation fighting against a European enemy. Victories were celebrated in almost every municipality throughout Japan by lantern parades, which became a regular feature of life in wartime Japan. On the other hand, however, the enormous socio-economic costs of the war placed an intolerable burden on the lives of people, particularly the poor, whose principal breadwinners were sent to death on battlefield. The war in Japan concluded with the outbreak of civil disorder in the Hibiya Riots of September 1905, when the war-weary people vented their anger at the ‘unfair’ peace terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth. Whilst providing a chronological backdrop to the war, this paper attempts to offer a glimpse of how Japanese people lived through the war. The Russo-Japanese War in Russian
Cultural Consciousness Few people in Russia expected war to break out with Japan in 1904, and even fewer understood why there should be military hostilities in such a remote part of their empire. Nevertheless, the surprise midnight attack on the Russian naval squadron in Port Arthur unleashed a torrent of patriotic feeling against Japan. Right-wing newspapers vilified Asian perfidy and noisy demonstrations were held in all major cities. Loyal subjects took to the streets with portraits of the Tsar, and audiences in theatres all over Russia demanded that the national anthem be played. At a performance of Rigoletto at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow during Shrovetide, for example, the national anthem was played as many as three times by popular consent even before the curtain was raised, and a further three times before the commencement of the final act. The Russo-Japanese War indeed made a huge impact on Russian society. Placing the conflict in the context of Russia's aggressive colonialist expansion in the Far East in the late 19th century, this paper will examine some of the ways in which the war manifested itself in the nation's cultural consciousness – from the dying Chekhov's quixotic plan to serve as a doctor on the front, to the venerable Tolstoy's typically outspoken castigation of the havoc and carnage caused by the "cancer of imperialism". Japanese Literary Responses to the
Russo-Japanese War Japanese writers responded to the Russo-Japanese war in a variety of ways. Some, like Mori Ogai and Tayama Katai, actually visited the battle arena and wrote pieces based on their experiences there. Others, like Yosano Akiko, responded from a distance and appeared to shed a critical gaze on the war itself. Some writers such as Shimazaki Tôson and Futabatei Shimei had no direct experience of the war but viewed the conflict as a positive sign of Japan’s emergence as a modern state able to stand equal to western powers. Notwithstanding the variety of responses, the war can be said to have had a profound influence in creating, to borrow Raymond Williams’ memorable phrase, a new “structure of feeling” for the entire next generation of Japanese writers. I will set out some of the main literary responses to the war among Japanese writers of the time, and attempt to show how this conflict helped produce a more self-reflective, inward-looking tendency among writers that prefigured the overall mood of the following Taisho period. Gods, Numbers, and the War: Tsushima Images
in the Works of Velimir Khlebnikov In this paper, I focus on the changes in the images and meanings of the Russo-Japanese War as expressed in the poetry of Velimir Khlebnikov, and discuss the Russian Futurists’ view of Asia observed in his works through its comparison with those of the contemporary Russian poets and writers belonging to other schools of thought. As is widely recognised, Russo-Japanese War had an enormous influence on Russian writers and poets such as Tolstoi, Andreev, Bryusov, Blok and V.Ivanov. Such writers, each with their diverse cultural backgrounds and world views ranging from Realism to Symbolism, are known to have shown their reactions to the war in their own individual ways. Yet the impact that the war had on the Russian Avant-garde movement had scarcely been discussed because there had been an emphasis on the Symbolist movement or on the eschatological climate, causing the emergence of such a movement at the time. But in fact, the Russo-Japanese War, especially Russia’s loss at Tsushima affected the contemporary Russian Avant-garde artists to the extent that it eventually caused the drastic move from Symbolism to Futurism. In 1914, when the Italian Futurist Marinetti visited Russia, Khlebnikov declared the independence of the Russian Futurism by writing to Marinetti, ‘We had plunged into the Future in 1905,’ and emphasized its own historical precedence. But such a view held by Khlebnikov gradually evolved towards solidarity with Asia with an increasing anti-Western orientation. In the paper I attempt to uncover the process whereby such change takes place by observing the following three developments in Khlebnikov's works: 1) Khlebnikov's "Tsushima experience"(1905); 2) "Law of time"(1912); and 3) "A letter to two Japanese" (1916). Consuming Nationalism: Patriotic Objects of
Desire during the Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War was one of the first successful modern wars in terms of the public dissemination of information, alongside the commodification and consumption of nationalism. The modern technology of print media - including magazines, political cartoons, picture prints, photographs as well as postcards (which boosted an unprecedented ‘postcard boom’) - disseminated war information and were consumed by a wide-range of people. Young boys were dressed in Navy sailor uniforms with trumpets in their hands enjoying modern tin toys of battleships as well as various picture books depicting the war. Daily objects and war memorabilia such as mass-produced glass and pottery objects idolized war heroes and popularised war events. The patriotic mood was reflected also by the styles, patterns and colours of contemporary lady’s fashion. The genroku moy (genroku pattern), a traditional design was revived as symbolising power and speed, and the hairstyle nicknamed ‘203 metre hill’ through its association with a famous battle became popular for women ranging from geisha to high school girls. The Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo was instrumental in creating cutting-edge war fashion as part of urban culture. This paper intends to show the popular experience of the war through the objects of desire. Looking for Poland in Japan: Polish art world
responses to the Russo-Japanese War When, in the early years of the twentieth-century, Russia and Japan moved towards war, Polish hopes were raised that the brother ‘David’ would fatally wound the Russian Goliath. Living under imperial rule and subject to vigorous campaigns of Russification, nationalist Poles took the view that the enemy’s enemy should become their friend. Missions were dispatched to Tokyo to secure support for the struggle to shake Poland free of the Romanovs. Unsuccessful, these initiatives might seem little more than a footnote in the history of diplomacy and conflict. However, the distant thunder of the war off Port Arthur and the Tsushima Strait, was keenly heard in Polish culture. For Polish society – deprived of sovereign political institutions – culture was politics. Paintings, buildings and poems were judged according to a vigorously maintained national index. It is not surprising then that ‘Japonisme’ -- a pan-European fashion – carried a particular political charge in this particular context. As this paper will show, prominent artists, collectors and writers, used symbols of Japan to comment on the state of Poland. In Krakow, Feliks ‘Mangha’ Jasienski walked in the city in the armour of a samurai warrior and a local monument to Polish insurgency was represented by Stanislaw Wyspianski in a famous drawing cycle as Mount Fuji. The insistent and in many ways eclectic orientalism of Polish culture under Russian rule appears to stretch the connections drawn by Said and others between orientalism and empire. According to her Polish devotees, the source of Japan’s power of resistance lay not in her imperial social order but in her desirable alterity. Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Origins
of the War with Japan My paper will examine the principal ideologies that drove Russian expansion in East Asia in the decade before the outbreak of the war with Japan in 1904. I will focus on the four individuals whose ideas strongly influenced tsarist policy on the Pacific during the first decade of Nicholas II’s reign: Finance Minister Sergei Witte, War Minister Aleksei Kuropatkin, the explorer Nikolai Przhevalskii, and the poet and newspaper publisher Prince Esper Ukhtomskii. I will argue that Russian diplomacy in East Asia at the time was highly erratic and confused in part because of these four competing visions of empire in the Orient. | ||||
