[Large Map of the Entire Situation of the Russo-Japanese Conflict]

Following the war in Manchuria and Korea from the Japanese home front.

This Japanese map of Manchuria and Korea was issued on June 23, 1904, four months into the Russo-Japanese War, as a supplement to issue 19 of the magazine Nichi-Ro Sensō Jikki (“Record of the Russo-Japanese War”). The title translates approximately to “Large Map of the Entire Situation of the Russo-Japanese Clash.” It was published in Tokyo by Hakubunkan, one of Japan’s leading publishers, whose war magazine ran to 110 issues between February 1904 and December 1905.

The map extends from Harbin and the Russian Far East south to Korea, the Shandong Peninsula, and northern Kyushu, at a scale of 1:3,000,000. Railways are overprinted in red, tracing the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria to Vladivostok, its southern branch through Mukden to Port Arthur, and the line from Beijing through Tianjin to the northeast. Red dots highlight major towns, and dotted lines across the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan mark sea routes with their distances. The legend (upper left) also identifies telegraph lines, undersea cables, and borders. Four small city plans (upper left) show Harbin, Jilin, Mukden, and Yingkou, while a larger inset (lower left) details the fortifications of Port Arthur and Vladivostok, Russia’s two Pacific naval bases.

Japan opened the war with an attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur on the night of February 8, 1904. By the time this map appeared, Japanese troops had occupied Seoul, crossed the Yalu River into Manchuria, and cut off Port Arthur by land with their victory at Nanshan in late May. A Russian relief force had been turned back at Telissu only a week before publication. The map also shows how little of the fighting touched either belligerent’s home territory. Korea and Manchuria dominate the sheet, with the latter labeled as part of Qing China, while Japan itself appears only as a corner of Kyushu and the tip of Honshu. (The term used here for China proper, Shina, is now considered derogatory.)

Port Arthur surrendered in January 1905, followed by the Japanese victories at Mukden in March and Tsushima in May. Under the Treaty of Portsmouth, signed that September, Russia recognized Japan’s paramount interests in Korea and transferred its lease on the Liaodong Peninsula, along with the railway from Changchun to Port Arthur. That stretch of the red line on this map became the South Manchuria Railway, the backbone of Japan’s expansion on the Asian mainland. Korea was annexed in 1910, and Manchuria became the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932.