Empire: victory over Russia and the annexation of Korea
Japan defeats Russia, the first modern victory of an Asian power over a European one, and then annexes Korea as a colony.
- The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 — Peter Duus, University of California Press (1995)
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present — Andrew Gordon, Oxford University Press (2003)
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
Rivalry with Russia over Manchuria and Korea led to war in February 1904. After a costly siege of Port Arthur and a huge land battle at Mukden, Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet at Tsushima in May 1905. The Treaty of Portsmouth, brokered by US President Theodore Roosevelt, gave Japan southern Sakhalin, Russia’s leases in southern Manchuria and a free hand in Korea. Nationalists across Asia, from India to China, were thrilled that an Asian nation had beaten a European empire, though many Japanese rioted because the treaty brought no indemnity.
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present — Andrew Gordon, Oxford University Press (2003)
- The Making of Modern Japan — Marius B. Jansen, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2000)
Japan made Korea a protectorate in 1905 and annexed it in 1910. Colonial rule brought railways and industry but also land seizures, harsh policing and, from the late 1930s, policies forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names, worship at Shinto shrines and work in Japanese mines and factories. The peaceful March First Movement of 1919 was suppressed with thousands killed.
- The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 — Peter Duus, University of California Press (1995)
- A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present — Andrew Gordon, Oxford University Press (2003)
Why it matters today
Victory over Russia was celebrated across Asia and made Japan a great power. The colonisation of Korea (1910–45), including forced labour, the suppression of Korean language and names, and the "comfort women" system, remains the core of a painful relationship with South Korea, and part of why apologies and history textbooks are so politically charged.
For Koreans this is the moment the country was lost. The 1905 protectorate treaty, signed under military pressure and never approved by Emperor Gojong, is remembered as the Eulsa treaty of shame, and the annexation of 29 August 1910 as the "national humiliation". South Korea and Japan still disagree over whether these treaties were ever legally valid.