Japan was humiliated by the USA in the mid-1850s.¹ This introduced them to the brutal reality of global power. They vowed to modernise their military, making them equal to the western powers.² The Royal Navy was the world’s largest and most effective fleet and the Japanese aimed at creating their version. They bought British built warships and their officers were trained by the Royal Navy.

Japan’s navy needed coal supplies but didn’t have any fossil fuel resources: Korea did. Japan embraced the European ‘template’ of Imperialism by colonising Korea in 1894. Simultaneously the Russians were exploding eastwards, also building an empire. They were a competitor for resources and territory. War was likely when Japanese and Russian interests clashed in the Far East. The first significant conflict was a land battle at Mukden, 1905.³ Russia’s defeat disabused Europeans about Japanese inferiority.

Mukden was a catastrophe but the naval battle of Tsushima, also in 1905, changed world history.

The Russian Baltic fleet sailed 18,000 miles to rescue their Pacific fleet at Port Arthur. They arrived too late and continued towards their base at Vladivostok. Before getting there they were intercepted.The Japanese were overwhelmingly superior, “All 11 Russian battleships were lost, out of which seven were sunk and four captured.”⁴

The Japanese had destroyed Russia’s Pacific and Baltic fleets. This was a pivotal in world history because every other major power faced impediments in their naval programmes. Britain was over-stretched and the USA was just beginning their shipbuilding. Germany and France were focused on Europe, leaving Japan controlling the Far East.

Tsushima happened  a century after Trafalgar. The Japanese were sensitive to this,

“Since the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902, Britain had been Japan’s foremost ally and played a key role in its naval preparations before the war. And yet, the sudden [Japanese] public interest in Nelson was self-serving too, since the domestic media, much like the foreign press, hailed Tōgō as his true heir, thereby placing Japan and Britain on a similar footing.”⁵

For Togo to be spoken of as a new Nelson boosted Japanese self-esteem. It fuelled their image as a superpower. In the early 20^th century being a superpower implied a colonial policy. They were enthusiastic about this. Korea was brought entirely under their thumb by 1910.⁶

The chaos of the First World War gave Japan an opportunity to ‘fight’ Germany by seizing their Far Eastern territories. They also began dismembering China.⁷

The battle of Tsushima turbo-charged Japan into full-blown militarism ultimately with disastrous consequences.

Notes

1 Perry Expedition – Wikipedia

2 For their army they used Germany and France as their model.

3  The importance of the battle of Mukden (1905) | Odeboyz’s Blog

4 Battle of Tsushima – Wikipedia

5 Time to Remember, Time to Forget: The Battle of Tsushima in Japanese Collective Memory since 1905 – The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus

6 Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910 – Wikipedia

7 Twenty-One Demands – Wikipedia