History UsefulNotes / RussoJapaneseWar

* Several of Valentin Pikul's novels are set in this period, most notably ''Cruisers'', starring Russian naval officers, and ''Wealth'', where an idealistic journalist is appointed the governor of Kamchatka, which is barely settled, full of {{Corrupt Hick}}s and dangerously close to Japan. A Japanese landing ensues and is repelled by [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece breaking out some old rifles from an unused depot]], but the hero is booted from Kamchatka nevertheless by said hicks.

* Russian film ''Admiral'', centered around Admiral Alexander Kolchak, starts with the Battle of Chemulpo.

* ''Podcast/HardcoreHistory'': Dan Carlin discusses this war in some detail in his "Supernova in the East" series of episodes about Japanese imperialism and the Pacific War.

In Japan, the result was met with mixed feelings. There was considerable public outrage as the public had been led to expect a great victory over Russia, when in fact what they got was little better than a stalemate - though news of the outbreak of war had been met with dismay and despair in the general populace, as the war went on and the tactical victories mounted they came to expect (and were encouraged to believe) that their continued sacrifices would result in a truly fantastic peace treaty of the kind we now know Japan could never have gotten. Riots, protests, and sporadic assassinations persisted for some months after the war's conclusion and the Japanese economy took a decade or so to overcome the 'hit' caused by the war and the ''massive'' debts the country had run up fighting it. Other problems from the war would take much longer to become apparent; the "lessons learned" of the Russo-Japanese War would lead the Imperial Japanese Navy, and Japan herself, to utter ruin three decades later when facing [[ForeverWar an eight-year war]] [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar with a resurgent China]] and a HopelessWar [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII with the United States.]]

The Russo-Japanese War (or Manchurian Campaign) was a conflict that arose from tensions between the [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles Russian Empire]] and the [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun Japanese Empire]] in regards to Manchuria and Korea. The Russian Empire's increasing economic influence over Manchuria, where their Finance Ministry was establishing a railway through a state-owned subsidiary corporation was strengthening her hold over territories uncomfortably close to the Japanese Home Islands and the neutral but contested buffer state of Korea.

Believing victory far-off and not worth the cost, Tsar Nicholas II [[KnowWhenToFoldEm elected to negotiate peace]] and focus on internal conflicts. The American President Theodore Roosevelt volunteered to act as a mediator (winning a Nobel peace prize for his efforts). The Treaty of Portsmouth was soon signed to signify peace. Ironically, in its bid to cut their losses and avoid the SunkCostFallacy the Russian government effectively decided not to win the war. The war was extremely heavy on the fledgling Japanese economy, to the point that they had hardly any bargaining power during the peace talks, and the top Russian negotiator, Count Sergey Vitte, was able to obtain such favorable peace terms that the Japanese envoy, Baron Komura, quipped: [[PyrrhicVictory "I don't know who's really lost here!"]] (the spiralling costs, barely-favourable peace, and unrealistic expectations were the reasons for the riots mentioned below). In short, mosts analysts speculate that war was economically unsustainable for Japan[[note]] More than 90% of all the money in all the banks in the country had been spent on the war effort, and despite the doubling of taxation the government's regular income was barely enough to cover the interest on its existing loans - Japan's debts to foreign banks were at least five times larger than those to its domestic ones and growing rapidly. Worse still, new foreign loans would be (drastically) harder to find, and the interest/repayment rates on them higher, the moment Russia declared her intent to win the war at whatever cost. Russia's fiscal situation wasn't pretty either, but her economy was ''much'' less reliant on trade and exports (meaning that Japan would be much worse off if it got to the point where one or both sides needed to print money) and had an economy, population, and reserve of trained manpower more than three times larger than that of Japan's to boot.[[/note]] and even in the wake of the horrific military disasters that were Tsushima, Mukden and Port Arthur, Russia could still win, [[TheDeterminator had they persisted just a couple of months more]].

Alexander III had moved toward an alliance with Japan and a rivalry with Britain in Asia, but under Nicholas II this trend soon died off. His personal feelings (after the stupid attempt on his life during a visit in Japan) didn't help it either. The continued Russian presence in Korea was actually something of an accident. Imperial Russia was notorious for the way the various Ministries failed to consult or work with (if not outright work against) each other, the overall effect being that the policies of the ministries tended to counteract each other. This was okay, if inefficient, in purely internal affairs but in foreign affairs it was about to prove disastrous because Japan wasn't really sure about Russia's 'real' position on Japanese interests in Korea (not that 'Russia' herself knew either).

80,000 Japanese and 70,0000 Russians died in the war. Russia lost much political esteem and respect after its defeat. The humiliation of Russia's defeat at the hands of the Japanese contributed (along with some economic problems) to the Russian Revolution of 1905, which forced the establishment of Russia's first national legislature, the Duma, in 1906, and an (ultimately ill-fated) experiment with constitutional monarchy that [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions would not survive contact with]] UsefulNotes/WorldWarI a decade later. (Interestingly, Russia's poor performance in this war led Germany to underestimate Russia's capabilities in the Great War; that said, the Germans did ultimately force Russia to come to terms.)

80k Japanese and 70k Russians died in the war. Russia lost much political esteem and respect due to the incident, and was underestimated due to it during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. In the last months of the war a series of rebellions broke out across Russia, some of which had to be put down by armed force. The minor economic depression which was the chief cause of the civil disorder (the Army's perceived bungling of the war effort was just the last straw) was over within just a few years, and Russia experienced a period of great prosperity in the following decade that only petered out after the first couple of years of [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the war]]. In Japan the result was met with mixed feelings. There was considerable public outrage as the public had been led to expect a great victory over Russia, when in fact what they got was little better than a stalemate - though news of the outbreak of war had been met with dismay and despair in the general populace, as the war went on and the tactical victories mounted they came to expect (and were encouraged to believe) that their continued sacrifices would result in a truly fantastic peace treaty of the kind we now know Japan could never have gotten. Riots, protests, and sporadic assassinations persisted for some months after the war's conclusion and the Japanese economy took a decade or so to overcome the 'hit' caused by the war and the ''massive'' debts the country had run up fighting it. Other problems from the war would take much longer to become apparent; the "lessons learned" of the Russo-Japanese War would lead the Imperial Japanese Navy, and Japan herself, to utter ruin three decades later when facing [[ForeverWar an eight-year war]] [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar with a resurgent China]] and a HopelessWar [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII with the United States.]]

!!Depictions in fiction:

* One of the main protagonists of ''Manga/GoldenKamuy'', Saichi Sugimoto, is a veteran of the war who earned the title of "Immortal Sugimoto" after single-handedly taking out a Russian machine-gun position during the Siege of Port Arthur. In fact, the scars of the war play a major role in the story; several other major characters also fought at Port Arthur, and one of the main factions looking for the gold are rogue veterans seeking reparations for the blood they spent.

** Had Admiral Makarov not died from his flagship striking a mine, the Second Pacific Squadron could've been a reinforcement of a still-functional First Pacific Squadron instead of a desperate replacement. And Admiral Tōg&#333 would've thus had to worry about being flanked by Makarov's surviving ships when he struck Admiral Rozhestvensky's fleet at Tsushima.

* TheDeterminator: The Second Pacific Squadron. No matter the breaking of parts, the living conditions, the scarce supplies and the bad health on the ships, they had orders to reach Port Arthur first and Vladivostok later and only Tōgō's battlefleet stopped ''some'' of them from succeeding (yes, some of the ships did arrive in Vladivostok). The most determinator of all was Rear Admiral Dmitry Gustavovich von Fölkersam[[note]][[InTheBlood grandfather of the future]] UsefulNotes/WorldWarII [[UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons SS commando officer]] Adrian von Fölkersam[[/note]], Rozhestvensky's second-in-command and most trusted subordinate: he was terminally ill with cancer, yet he commanded the 2nd Battleship Division until cancer killed him the day before the battle, and, due to Rozhestvensky keeping his death secret to keep morale up, ''continued until Japanese fire destroyed his corpse''.

!!Tropes that describe this event:
* ArmsDealer: Both sides purchased weapons from the German arms manufacturer Krupp. The Japanese bought thirty-two 120mm Krupp howitzers (using a French-style screw breech and no recoil buffers) which they used to good effect at the Battle of the Yalu. The Russians also bought Krupp howitzers of the same caliber (albeit with a modern recoil system) and deployed them on the Manchurian battlefield in 1905.
** Even better, virtually the entire IJN was either constructed for them by the British, or consisted of designs purchased from the British and/or French and built for the IJN by other nations. The IJN didn't build its first modern capital ship until AFTER the war ended.
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Rozhestvensky. A Rear Admiral and the chief of staff of the Russian Navy, and with a killer hook he would use on undisciplined sailors.
* {{BFG}}: The Japanese used [[http://i.imgur.com/56fr3ZZ.jpg 280mm howitzers]] during the Siege of Port Arthur; they were derived from coastal pieces in service in Italy and manufactured at Osaka Arsenal. The Russian defenders nicknamed the shells the howitzer fired "train shells" from the sound they made.
** Additionally, the Japanese and Russian battleships both mounted 12-inch (305mm) guns in their main batteries (capable of launching 750-850 pound shells at 2,600 feet per second) The naval battles of this war featured both side scoring hits with these guns at unheard-of ranges, ranging up to 8 miles, meaning that combatants could suffer substantial damage long before the smaller secondary batteries could get within range. Newer battleship designs would exchange the smaller guns for more big guns, leading to the Dreadnoughts of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI.
* ColonelBadass: Colonel Nikolai Tret'yakov. He was the main Russian commander at Nanshan and Port Arthur's western defenses, and was one of the few Russian commanders who came out with a better reputation.
* CombatCommentator: The Russo-Japanese War was one of the last conflicts where both belligerents invited foreign military attaches to observe and write about the battles. Military powers from Great Britain to Italy each produced their own detailed staff histories of the war, in addition to the numerous reports written by the observers themselves. The First World War brought the end to this practice, when armies ended the late 19th century practice of inviting foreign military observers, and started enforcing security and censorship.
* CoolBoat: ''Mikasa'', the Japanese flagship at Tsushima was considered one of the most powerful ships in the world when she was built in 1902. She still exists as a museum ship in Yokosuka and is the [[LastOfHerKind very last surviving pre-dreadnought battleship afloat.]]
* CurbStompBattle: The Russians find themselves on the receiving end of this trope to various degrees, courtesy of the Japanese.
** Especially the Battle of Tsushima, widely considered one of the most lopsided defeats in military history. The Russians lost seven times as many ships and 10 times as many men as the Japanese.
** Mostly averted in the land war. The Russian army was able to retreat intact following a battle; the Japanese army was unable to pursue because it ran out of steam after an offensive and had to pause to rebuild its forces. Even the Russian army managed to retreat after the Mukden Operation to set up a new defense line further north. Also, the Russian garrison at Port Arthur held out longer than the Japanese expected, turning what should have been another CurbStompBattle into a bitter, six-month bout of trench warfare in which both sides took about equal casualties despite the Japanese numerical superiority.
** The Battle of Mukden, the largest battle in world history before World War I, arguably qualifies. While total casualties weren't too disparate (75,000 Japanese vs 90,000 Russian), ''irrecoverable'' losses (killed/captured/missing) ''were'' (16,000 Japanese vs 37,000 Russian). The Imperial Russian Army was flat-out routed by a force inferior to it in both numbers of men and equipment. It managed to escape encirclement and destruction, but it was still a crushing and humiliating defeat, one that more or less decided the war in favor of Japan along with Tsushima.
* DavidVersusGoliath: Little Japan [[note]] okay, at the time it was an empire that also owned Taiwan and other territories. Still tiny.[[/note]] against the second-largest nation in the entire world. Japan won, startling everyone. Except UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt, who admired them as "the plucky little guy".
** Russia had an enormous territory, but economically and politically it was [[NotSoDifferent not much better developed than Japan]], and the size of its territory itself made the fighting all the more difficult, as it happened in the most remote and undeveloped corner of the country.
* TheDeterminator: The Second Pacific Squadron. No matter the breaking of parts, the living conditions, the scarce supplies and the bad health on the ships, they had orders to reach Port Arthur first and Vladivostok later and only Tōgō's battlefleet stopped ''some'' of them from succeeding (yes, some of the ships did arrive in Vladivostok). The most determinator of all was Rear Admiral Dmitry Gustavovich von Fölkersam[[note]][[InTheBlood grandfather of the future]] UsefulNotes/WorldWarII [[UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons SS commando officer]] Adrian von Fölkersam[[/note]], Rozhestvensky's second-in-command and most trusted subordinate: he was terminally ill with cancer, yet he commanded the 2nd Battleship Division until cancer killed him the day before the battle, and, due to Rozhestvensky keeping his death secret to keep morale up, ''continued until Japanese fire destroyed his corpse''.
* DeusExMachina: Japan would have almost certainly have run out of money to maintain its war effort if not for the large unexpected loans arranged by American Jewish banker Jacob Schiff, which, eventually, covered nearly half the cost of war incurred by Japan. Schiff might inadvertently have saved lives of many Jews a few decades later during World War II as the grateful Japanese government took uncharacteristically charitable view of European Jews escaping Nazi-dominated Europe and allowed tens of thousands either transit through Japanese territory or a safe refuge within Japanese Empire (the Shanghai Ghetto).
** On the other hand, Schiff's heavy involvement did a *lot* to fuel an increasingly widespread perception of the "pernicious Jewish international conspiracy to control world events". That said...while the Japanese gratitude which expressed itself in the form of rescuing Jews would almost certainly not have happened without the Schiff loans, the Schiff loans were basically just an extra log on the anti-Semitism fire, and things would have most likely gone down much as they historically did without them. So, all in all, a net positive.
* DidntSeeThatComing: Rozhestvensky was infamous for being unpredictable, at least regarding his route. The reason the battle against him happened at Tsushima was that Tōgō caught on to this and decided to wait for him in the one place where he could anticipate his route for Vladivostok: (the Korea Strait, where Tsushima is, was the fastest way, and from there he could either block Rozhestvensky or quickly determine if he had taken the Kanmon Strait, the Tsugaru Strait or the La Perouse Strait, and redeploy accordingly).
* DoABarrelRoll: Inverted with the "Tōgō Turn". When a line of warships needed to reverse directions, they could either "Turn in Sequence", with the entire line snaking around behind the leader, or "Turn Together", with all of the ships executing their turn at the same time, effectively reversing the entire line. The former maintained the order of battle (ships at the front remained at the front), but exposed the entire fleet to fire as it required every ship to pass through the same spot for their turn, giving enemy gunners a chance to concentrate their fire on a single unmoving spot while the fleet obligingly sailed through it. The latter avoided this, but would result in the ships at the tail end of the formation now being at the head. As this would have resulted in Tōgō's cruisers engaging Rozhestvensky's battleships, he decided to bet on poor Russian gunnery to keep his strategy intact.
* EnemyMine: Makarov and Rozhestvensky had this relationship: Makarov hated Rozhestvensky for his BrutalHonesty getting in the way of politics, and [[ItsPersonal for sleeping with Makarov's wife]], Rozhestvensky despised Makarov for being too politicized and being unable to keep his wife in his bed, but they had the utmost respect for each other's skills as sailors and commanders, and when the situation required it before the war they helped each other.
* GenghisGambit: The Russians attempted to use the war as a way to draw attention away from their domestic problems. It backfired, mostly because they lost, and as a direct result of the troops being away from European Russia peasant uprisings erupted across the country that would take two years to stamp out.
* HeroOfAnotherStory: Colonel Carl Gustv Emil Mannerheim, who saved the battle of Mukden from turning into a complete catastrophe and managed to cover the Russian retreat. He was later to become a Lieutenant General in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI - and Field Marshall and commander-in-chief of [[UsefulNotes/FinnsWithFearsomeForests army of independent Finland]].
* HighlyConspicuousUniform: The Japanese Army began the war wearing dark blue winter uniforms; after the Yalu battle khaki uniforms were issued, but dark blue-khaki gear combinations could be seen up to the end of the war.
* KillItWithFire: Japanese ammunitions used [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimose_powder Shimose powder]] as an explosive, a variant of picric acid that was more stable than normal picric acid (which would later be replaced with the more expensive and less powerful TNT precisely because it wouldn't explode if kept just a little improperly) and had an incendiary effect, the latter resulting in the Russian battleships being burned down before sinking.
* MoreDakka: Many of the war's land engagements had ammunition expenditures in the ''millions''. At Nanshan (1 day) 2.19 million rifle rounds and 34,049 artillery shells were fired--more rounds fired than in the entire Sino-Japanese War; at Mukden (19 days) 20.11 million rifle rounds and 279,394 artillery shells were fired. As a comparison, the Germans used 25 million rifle rounds in the entire UsefulNotes/FrancoPrussianWar (approx. 287 days).
** It was the first war in which the modern machine gun saw more than token use, with deadly consequences. Interestingly the Russians were the ''only'' major power in this period to actually have more than a handful of machine guns yet (beginning in 1903). Everyone else was going to get machine guns and quick-firing field artillery in the very near future (the German Army's acquisitions budget lagged behind, so they'd only get theirs after everyone else in 1910), but of course the Russians' love of big guns meant they just ''had to'' get both as soon as possible.
* MountedCombat: Both sides used cavalry, with the land war beginning with some cavalry actions in northern Korea. The Russians were better fighting on horseback, as the action at Wu-chia-tun on 30 May 1904 showed. After that battle, Japanese used their cavalry forces in practice as mounted infantry. The two armies used their cavalry forces in various raids as well. In early 1905, Russians made an unsuccessful raid on the Japanese supply station at Inkou while Japanese cavalry forces operated in the Chinese Eastern Railway area.
** Rozhestvensky himself suffered from this. After the war, he faced court-martial for the disaster at Tsushima despite the fact that there wasn't much he could have done to change the outcome. Although not convicted, his reputation was forever ruined. He lived the last couple years of his life a recluse before dying of a heart attack in 1909.
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Rozhestvensky's bane, who forced him to go to war with insufficient ammunition and wait in Madagascar and Indochina for 'reinforcements' of ships so old it was a miracle they arrived at all, didn't get him a number of British and Italian-built ships from Chile and Argentina that he ''did'' want as reinforcements, and were unable or unwilling to get him support from France (an ally, but too scared by Britain and Japan to let Rozhestvensky supply his ships and clean their hulls in the waters of their colonies) or to get the German coal ships to follow his orders.
* PintSizedPowerhouse: Japan; and Admiral Tōgō himself, who was short even by Japanese standards of the time.
* PoorCommunicationKills: and can start wars too, as the Russian emperor not responding to the Japanese emperor's request to speak peacefully about Korea prompted Japan to attack.
** Being attacked and almost killed while on the visit to Japan as a Heir Apparent [[ItsPersonal didn't much endear Nicolas II to the country]]. The fact that he was ''much'' lampooned in the Russian underground press for the incident didn't help either.
* RatedMForManly: The Second Pacific Squadron: when they became curious to see what a real man-eating shark looked like, they started ''fishing them and cut them open'' ([[JustifiedTrope they couldn't be sure until they looked in their stomaches]]).
* RenaissanceMan: In addition to being Russia's finest admiral until his death in battle, Stepan Makarov was a talented oceanagrapher, and an inventor of both naval and civilian technologies. His most important being the armor-piecing capped shell (which all the world's navies promptly copied and which remained standard for naval guns until the age of missiles made guns themselves obsolete for anti-ship purposes) and the modern polar icebreaker (previous icebreakers lacked the hull strength to handle the heavy pack ice of the Arctic Ocean). Two smaller icebreakers of his design were also used to ferry trains and passengers across Lake Baikal until the final stretch of the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed in 1904.
* RousingSpeech: Togo at the opening of the Battle of Tsushima: "The Empire's fate depends on the result of this battle, let every man do his utmost duty." Somewhat subverted in that it was not an actual speech, but indicated by semaphore. The speech itself was a ShoutOut to UsefulNotes/HoratioNelson's speech at the Battle of the Nile.
* SelfDestructiveCharge
** The Russians' poor performance in the war helped spark the [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions 1905 Revolution]], which was a much greater threat to the Russian Empire than the Japanese ever were. It did not help that the cream of the Russian Navy was destroyed at Port Arthur and Tsushima. (The Russian Army might have taken heavy losses, but they were all replaceable. Expensive battleships, less so.)
** Less well-known is that by the time the war ended, Japan was literally bankrupt and seriously indebted; the country was entirely reliant on gigantic loans from overseas that it was only getting because people believed that Japan would win (Or because they hated the Czar--see Deus Ex Machina entry above)... and would have dried up as the war turned against her. As it was, Korea's relative natural and mineral wealth meant nothing to a country that now had zero domestic capital (9/10 of all the money in all the banks in the country had been spent as war-loans) with which to develop it and it took them a decade to surpass pre-war levels of prosperity. Even without Manchuria+Korea, Russia was experiencing an economic boom within just five years or so thanks to a flourishing domestic banking sector and a renewed influx of foreign (chiefly French) investment in railways (e.g. the new double-tracked, wide-gauge, high-speed Trans-Siberian railway) in particular.
* ShaggyDogStory: The cruise of the Second Pacific Squadron. They set sail on a voyage never attempted by such a big fleet because it was believed impossible (especially during wartime, when all neutral ports are closed) to try and relieve Port Arthur, [[TookALevelInBadass the crews became much more competent than at the start]], but they not only received news that Port Arthur had fallen when they were almost there, but when they tried to at least reinforce Vladivostok the fleet was destroyed at Tsushima.
* ShockingDefeatLegacy: Russia was shaken by the first Russian Revolution as the immediate consequence of the war, destablizing the Tsarist government at its core and, up to a point, setting the stage for the better known Revolution a decade later. Victory by the Japanese, a non-European people, over Russians, a European people (albeit a primarily "East Baltic" people and thus inferior to other European races), also undermined contemporary racist attitudes and energized anti-colonial movements in various parts of the world.
* SimpleYetAwesome: The importance of the Wireless Telegraph (that is to say, the Radio) in this war cannot be overemphasized. The Japanese fleet had been equipped with and trained on the new devices, allowing scouts to range out far from their home bases and report any sightings immediately, while Admiral Tōgō was able to keep his main force rested in port until Admiral Rozhestvensky's Russian Second Pacific Squadron had been located in the area.
* TookALevelInBadass: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Second Pacific Squadron. The latter set sail from Kronstadt with the worse crews in the Russian Navy since it was created (notably, they had drafted a number of peasants and even convicts to crew the ships and gave them very little training) and arrived at Tsushima with crews just as competent and skilled (if not more) as the elite of the pre-war Russian Navy, the former started the war being about as good as the best of the Russian Navy and fought at Tsushima with a much greater level of skills and competence.
* UnderestimatingBadassery: The Russians made this mistake with regards to the Japanese. They weren't the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII last]]. The Japanese themselves also underestimated the ''Russians'' later, when they tried to invade the Soviet Union in 1939.
* VestigialEmpire: Russia.
* WeHaveReserves: Both sides used this tactic on land, with UsefulNotes/WorldWarI style trenches, artillery barrages, and machine gun nests. Ultimately the Japanese won most of these battles, but would lose more troops. They made up for it by capturing large amounts of Russians after winning battles, taking them out of the fight.
** The assault on Port Arthur would solidify this mindset among the Japanese. In reality, four separate frontal attacks against the fortress' eastern defenses were cut down before the Japanese switched their target to a hill on the western defenses, turned it into an artillery spotting post, and used it to shut down the port via long-range bombardment; but in the Japanese retelling of the story, this was conveniently forgotten, and emphasis placed on the offensive spirit of the bayonet charges. Japanese insistence on massed attacks and the spirit of the offensive would persist until World War II, long after the trenches of the Western Front had had discredited the idea for the Europeans.
* WhateverHappenedToTheMouse: Montenegro did absolutely nothing during the war and its declaration of war against Japan was completely forgotten until 2006 when a formal end to the conflict was declared as the union between Montenegro and Serbia was dissolved.
* WorthyOpponent: Tōgō regarded Rozhestvensky as this for bringing an untested and badly crewed fleet around the world in an unprecedented voyage and whipped the crews into shape. Rozhestvensky already deemed Tōgō as this before their confrontation for personally defeating and killing every other capable admiral Russia had, and after Tsushima personally congratulated him for beating him with a better performance than in the previous battles.
** Tōgō also had great respect for Makarov, having ordered flags flown at half staff after his death in battle.
* ZergRush: General Nogi and the Japanese high command were extremely fond of this during the Siege of Port Arthur, preferring straightforward bayonet charges to tactical maneuvering, suffering horrendous losses in the process. Since Port Arthur eventually surrendered, foreign military observers somehow concluded that massed bayonet charges against entrenched troops with machine guns weren't obsolete after all.
----

* ForWantOfANail: Had the shell hitting the main flagship not been a dud, both Heihachiro Tōgō and Isoroku Yamamoto may have been killed.
** Had Port Arthur been taken in the summer of 1904 and General Nogi's army been present at Liaoyang, the Russian army might not have escaped the Japanese envelopment to fight another day.
** This war meant the Annexation of Korea and acquisition of the Manchurian railway lines, [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors which paved the way for an seizure of Manchuria itself by a rogue division of the Imperial Army which believed itself to be acting in Japan's economic interests]], [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar which led to the Imperial Army dragging Japan into a brutal and horrific war with China to further Japan's interests before China could grow strong enough to resist a full Japanese invasion]] ([[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors which prevented the Chinese Communist Party from being destroyed and allowed them to win the 1st Chinese Civil War]]), [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII which led to the Imperial Navy dragging Japan into another war with pretty much everyone to avoid losing Japan's economic interests in China]], which led to Japan losing everything everywhere except within Japan itself and the division of Korea into Soviet and Allied occupation zones, which paved the way for UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar. All of this made for the rise of RedChina and UsefulNotes/NorthKorea. If this war had gone differently or not happened it's hard to say whether the peoples of East Asia would be better or worse off than they are now, but it couldn't fail to be very different.
** By effectively crushing Russia's Eastward ambitions, Japan forced Russia to refocuse it's attention on protecting its Western sphere of influence, namely, the Balkans. Also, had Russia ended this war with its reputation intact, it may have not taken such a heavy-handed measures during the lead up to WWI (as the war was originally seen in Russia as a way to restore some of the lost prestige) and World War One might have been much smaller in scope or even resolved peacefully.
** Had Admiral Makarov not died from his flagship striking a mine, the Second Pacific Squadron could've been a reinforcement of a still-functional First Pacific Squadron instead of a desperate replacement. And Admiral Tōg&#333 would've thus had to worry about being flanked by Makarov's surviving ships when he struck Admiral Rozhestvensky's fleet at Tsushima.
* FromBadToWorse: For Russia. The Japanese economy did not come out of the war looking pretty, but the Russian economy and national unity were in shambles, and 60,000 people would starve to death due to the money wasted on this war.

* NeverLiveItDown: After the incident at Dogger Bank, a British consul took care of warning Rozhestvensky that he was about to reach a fleet of fishing ships. Rozhestvensky was not amused, and told them to stay the hell away since he'd sink anything that could be a torpedo boat.

* ParanoiaFuel: The self-propelled torpedo. A new invention at the time, it could sink a battleship and could be carried by ''any'' ship, from dedicated torpedo boats to cruisers to modified merchantmen. Quite a scare for Rozhestvensky's Second Pacific Squadron...

** Tōg&#333 also had great respect for Makarov, having ordered flags flown at half staff after his death in battle.

* BadassArmy: The Frontier Guards for the Russians. Army veterans made up the force, who enjoyed better pay and living conditions than the regular army; consequently they were the most competent troops available for the Russians. They were responsible for guarding the Manchurian railway and came under the command of the Finance Ministry rather than the military (but had full complements of infantry, cavalry, and artillery). The guards were responsible for guarding the railway as the Russian army retreated, giving them a reputation for tenacity. The Japanese, frustrated with their skill gave orders to "make no prisoners of green uniforms; kill them without mercy!"

* TheEmpire: Both the Japanese and Russian empires. The latter was ''much'' larger than the former, though.

* EpicFail: The Russian Navy, on the ''wrong side of the world'', found a fleet of British fishing boats, and thought they were Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo boats (in the ''North Sea''--apparently they thought the Japanese had developed teleportation). So they opened fire on it with all their guns [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy and missed nearly every single shot.]] One battleship fired 500 shots without hitting a thing. Three fishermen and two Russians died (from friendly fire), including a ''priest''. Then, after losing a battle against a fishing flotilla (and nearly provoking a war with [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Great Britain]]), the Russian fleet steamed around the rest of the world and confronted the enemy at Tsushima... and then got utterly annihilated by the ''actual'' IJN.
** The Royal Navy shadowed the Russian fleet with its own cruiser squadrons after the Dogger Bank incident to make sure they wouldn't pull those kinds of shenanigans again. Rozhestvensky was reportedly green with envy each time he saw the smooth, precise maneuvers of the British ships, neatly keeping station behind his own straggling heap. Judging by the impressive numbers of Russian seamen lost to desertion or tropical disease, the Brits needn't have worried.

*** CurbStompCushion: most of the Japanese ships at Tsushima had been hit at least once, reporting varying levels of damage, and most Russian ships fought to the bitter end, firing their guns even as they were sinking.
*** Tsushima could have been a much more competitive battle had Rozhestvensky been given enough ammunition to train his gunners during the voyage, he could have sunk the Japanese flagship ''Mikasa'' in the first five minutes of the battle (instead of missing her by just few meters with every shell), which would have made "crossing the T" much more difficult to pull off.

** The attack on the fishing ships had a good reason: not only was the presence of two Japanese torpedo boats in the area a known fact (they had just been completed in British shipyards when the war was declared, and then they disappeared), but Japanese intelligence had done ''everything'' to make the Russians believe they were laying in ambush. While Admiral Rozhestvensky could recognize a torpedo boat, everyone else was nervous, and when the two torpedo boats apparently did show up the entire fleet started firing on anything emerging from the night and the mist, including the fishing ships and other Russian ships.

*** Rozhestvensky was also happy of being shadowed by the Royal Navy: with them around, the surviving torpedo boat (as the Russians were sure they had been there and that they had managed to sink one) would stay away.

** Had the [[ObstructiveBureaucrat Russian admiralty]] given Rozhestvensky enough ammunition to train his gunners, the Second Pacific Squadron might have won at Tsushima.

** The ammunition bit was the one that gave Tōgō the victory at Tsushima: had Rozhestvensky had enough ammunition to train his gunners, Tōgō's flagship ''Mikasa'' would have been sunk in the first five minutes of the battle, as the Japanese fleet was preparing to 'cross the T' (a dangerous but devastating tactic that allows the fleet in the horizontal line of the virtual T to shell the enemy with all their guns while the vertical line can reply with only the forward guns of the leading ships) and could not fight back the battleships ''Knyaz Suvorov'' (Russian flagship), ''Borodino'' and ''Imperator Alexander III'' yet.

** The reports on the Japanese movement in the North Sea: two of their torpedo boats had disappeared in the area at the start of the war (and, according to Russian accounts, they had actually tried to attack the Russians at Dogger Bank, only to retreat when the Russians spotted them and started firing on anything); Japanese nationals and suspected Japanese spies signaling to unknown ships in the mist; mysterious ships sighted in the area; ''coal bars for ships' engines found having a cavity in which you could place explosive to wreck a battleship from the inside''.

-->--'''[[FourStarBadass Marshal-Admiral Marquis]] Tōgō Heihachirō [[UsefulNotes/KnightFever OM GCVO]]'''

** The attack on the fishing ships had a good reason: not only was the presence of two Japanese torpedo boats in the area a known fact (they had just been completed in British shipyards when the war was declared, and then they disappeared), but Japanese intelligence had done ''everything'' to make the Russians believe they were laying in ambush. While [[FourStarBadass Admiral Rozhestvensky]] could recognize a torpedo boat, everyone else was nervous, and when the two torpedo boats apparently did show up the entire fleet started firing on anything emerging from the night and the mist, including the fishing ships and other Russian ships.

* FourStarBadass: Admiral Tōgō, definitely. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima Let the numbers speak for themselves.]]
** Admiral Zinovi Rozhestvensky, his opponent at Tsushima, for a simple reason: he took a fleet of ships that were either too old to sail or so new they had just been launched, crewed and commanded by the worst of the Russian navy (the best having already been defeated at Port Arthur and crewing the ships trapped in Vladivostok), whipped the crews into shape and ''took the fleet in an unprecedented voyage around the world without losing a single ship''. Granted, he lost badly at Tsushima although that was less his own fault and more due to the sailors under his command being untrained and being knocked out after the first couple minutes of the battle when a shell fragment hit him in the head. Even after Tsushima, Rozhestvensky's fame was so great that, while returning to Moscow after the war, every single bandit and rebel who stopped his train bowed to him and apologized for making him waste time before resupplying and letting him go.
** Russian Admirals Oskar Stark, Stepan Makarov and Wilgelm Vitigeft also qualified. Tōgō first established his credentials as FourStarBadass by kicking the ass of the first and killing the other two in battle, but all of them gave as good as they got: Stark, in spite of sabotage from the viceroy of Port Arthur, managed to thwart Tōgō's attempt at sinking the Russian Pacific Fleet in harbour (before being sacked for political reasons), Makarov gave Tōgō a desperate run for his money before his ship was hit by a mine, and Vitigeft ''nearly defeated Tōgō'' before being killed.
** Eduard Schensnov earned a promotion to Rear Admiral rank at the Yellow Sea by [[LeeroyJenkins charging the whole IJN with a single battleship]] to [[YouShallNotPass cover the retreat of the Pacific Fleet]] and not only surviving but managing to return home. The charge of the battleship ''Retvizan'' saved the Pacific Fleet: with Vitigeft dead and most of the fleet following his crippled flagship because they hadn't realized he was dead, the IJN would have easily annihilated the Russians had Schensnov not realized that the admiral was at least incapacitated and decided to earn Vitigeft's second-in-command enough time to take command.
On the Russian army side there were skilled experienced and capable commanders two specific examples from the siege of Port Arthur are Lieutenant Generals Roman Kondratenko and Konstantin Smirnov
** Lieutenant General Roman Kondratenko was a experienced military commander with an engineering background on his own initiative preemptively starting works to improve the defences and fortifications at Port Arthur prior to the start of the war. General Kondratenko was the core of the defence of Port Arthur rallying troops, commanding and directing the defence in the most dangerous regions and supervising the repairs to the defensive fortifications. The general successfully led the combined Russian imperial army and navy forces to repulse four Japanese assaults on Port Arthur. Unfortunately the general was mortally wounded when a japaneses siege howitzer shell detonated the armoury of a fortress he was commanding. Within 18 days of his death the general failures Stessel and Foch surrended Port Arthur.
** Lieutenant General Konstantin Smirnov a experienced commander with an artillery and general staff background. Smirnov was appointed to take command of Port Arthur's defences by the Tsar. However the above mentioned previous commander Stessel some how convinced himself that he was still the head commander and Smirnov was his subordinate. Remaining in Port Arthur and constantly counter-manding Smirnov's orders. Additionally Smirnov and the other senior officers were not included in the discussion about surrendering Port Arthur Stessel and Foch did this without consulting the Tsar, supreme command or any of their field commanders in the siege.

* Lieutenant General Roman Kondratenko was a experienced military commander with an engineering background on his own initiative preemptively starting works to improve the defences and fortifications at Port Arthur prior to the start of the war. General Kondratenko was the core of the defence of Port Arthur rallying troops, commanding and directing the defence in the most dangerous regions and supervising the repairs to the defensive fortifications. The general successfully led the combined Russian imperial army and navy forces to repulse four Japanese assaults on Port Arthur. Unfortunately the general was mortally wounded when a japaneses siege howitzer shell detonated the armoury of a fortress he was commanding. Within 18 days of his death the general failures Stessel and Foch surrended Port Arthur.
* Lieutenant General Konstantin Smirnov a experienced commander with an artillery and general staff background. Smirnov was appointed to take command of Port Arthur's defences by the Tsar. However the above mentioned previous commander Stessel some how convinced himself that he was still the head commander and Smirnov was his subordinate. Remaining in Port Arthur and constantly counter-manding Smirnov's orders. Additionally Smirnov and the other senior officers were not included in the discussion about surrendering Port Arthur Stessel and Foch did this without consulting the Tsar, supreme command or any of their field commanders in the siege.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: The war foreshadowed later developments in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII on land (the supremacy of defensive warfare, the need for extremely close artillery-infantry co-ordination to overcome said supremacy, and the need for effective General Staffs with the authority and power to enforce overall and methodical plans for both campaigns and individual battles) and at sea (the importance of inter-ship communications, the need to stick to main and cut down on secondary guns to simplify gunnery [leading to the 'Dreadnaught Revolution'], the incredible effectiveness of mines and torpedoes).
** The mutinies the Russian Navy faced also foreshadowed [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober the February and October Revolutions of 1917]] that would bring about the downfall of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union.

* GeneralFailure:For Russia
Anatoly Stessel. Started as the commander of Port Arthur however when he was ordered to relocate to a new posting and be replaced as commander of Port Arthur's defences by General Smirnov. Stessel chose to interpret the orders to mean that Smirnov was his subordinate, and remained at Port Arthur, countermanding Smirnov's orders and denying his requests for supplies and reinforcements, and sending misleading telegrams to the Tsar blaming Smirnov for any setbacks. He also ignored orders from General Aleksei Kuropatkin chief of the Russian General staff to leave Port Arthur by a destroyer on July 3, 1904. Stessel then foolishly declined the Japanese offer to allow civilians and women and children to be evacuated from Port Arthur at start of the siege which lead to increased drain on the defenders food supplies, Stessel then latter surrendered to the Japanese without consulting any of the other commanders, when the Japanese occupied Port Arthur they were shocked to discover that there were still large supplies of ammunition and food so Stessel surrendered when it was easily conceivable that the defenders could have held out several months more at minimum

* UsefulNotes/HistoryOfNavalWarfare: The last major war waged between fleets of Pre-Dreadnought Battleships (HMS ''Dreadnought'' would be launched the next year, with other countries launching similar ships soon after; the superiority of large-caliber battleship guns was decisively confirmed at Tsushima and validated the all-big-gun theories of men like [[UsefulNotes/NewRomanLegions Vittorio Cuniberti]], [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Lord Jackie Fisher and Sir Philip Watts]], and [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks Rear Admiral Washington Capps]]). Also the only time in history that a major battle was waged between two large fleets of battleships that ended in a decisive victory (in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, the Battle of Jutland ended in a bloody stalemate, and fleet actions in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII would be dominated by airpower; while there were some battleship vs battleship engagements, none involved large fleets). This war, along with the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar, would also serve as {{Foreshadowing}} for UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, with the nations expanding into the Pacific and taking territory by force from European powers.
** As an interesting sidenote, two ships from this battle, the Russian cruiser ''Aurora'' and the Japanese battleship ''Mikasa'', survive to this day as museum ships in their home countries.

* [[ObstructiveBureaucrat Obstructive Bureaucrats]]: Rozhestvensky's bane, who forced him to go to war with insufficient ammunition and wait in Madagascar and Indochina for 'reinforcements' of ships so old it was a miracle they arrived at all, didn't get him a number of British and Italian-built ships from Chile and Argentina that he ''did'' want as reinforcements, and were unable or unwilling to get him support from France (an ally, but too scared by Britain and Japan to let Rozhestvensky supply his ships and clean their hulls in the waters of their colonies) or to get the German coal ships to follow his orders.

* Lieutenant General Roman Kondratenko was a experienced military commander with an engineering background on his own initiative preemptively starting works to improve the defences and fortifications at Port Arthur prior to the start of the war. General Kondratenko was the core of the defence of Port Arthur rallying troops, commanding and directing the defence in the most dangerous regions and supervising the repairs to the defensive fortifications. The general successfully led the combined Russian imperial army and navy forces to repulse four Japanese assaults on Port Arthur
Unfortunately the general was mortally wounded when a japaneses siege howitzer shell detonated the armoury of a fortress he was commanding. Within 18 days of his death the general failures Stessel and Foch surrended Port Arthur.