In this German postcard, we can see a map of Korea and Manchuria, the main battlefields of the war. The Russian bear, with a French cap hanging on its stubby tail, attacks a woman representing Japan. She is advertising Korea and Manchuria as scenic lands to the bear, however, “without striking a blow against us, it’s not possible to get them.” In the background behind the scene responds a British man with a battleship on his head: “Yessss… Allright!”
The postcard offers a humorous commentary on the war-alliances, which lay behind the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-1905. Japan entered a bilateral military alliance with Great Britain in 1902. This enabled to enter a war against Russia without fear that any other nation would join the Russian side. Tsarist Russia, on the other hand, looked to France for financial help. Furthermore, one can interpret the postcard as a presentation of Russia’s military weakness, and as a result, as the western countries’ acceptance of (even admiration for) Japan’s emergence as a powerful nation-state. It also shows that the world payed close attention to the war, which represented a new dimension of “modern” warfare, and a first confrontation between “East” and “West.”