Russia Lampooning the Japanese Foe

Russian propaganda postcards often combined elaborate cartooning with long captions, as seen in the samples that follow with full translation of the Russian texts.

The first three graphics were issued as a series with the recurring image of an animated Japanese sun observing the scene and text attributed to R. Mech. All three of these postcards contain the notation that they had passed censorship in Moscow on April 10, 1904.

These and most of the other Russian postcards reproduced here were clearly issued at the very beginning of the war, before the Russian army and navy began suffering severe defeats.

The following two detailed cartoons involving "Uncle Sam" play on the fact that the Japanese had financed their war in considerable part with loans raised in New York (as well as in London). Both reflect early optimism that the Japanese would cower before Russia’s might and quickly become desperate for more financial support.

The following black-and-white juxtaposition of a confident and disgruntled Japanese "before and after" bombarding Port Arthur, also issued early in the war, similarly reflects gross overconfidence, for after blockading the Russian fleet in Port Arthur after their surprise attack in February 1904, the Japanese subsequently destroyed not only that Far Eastern fleet but also a huge Russian armada sent from the Baltic Sea all around the world to rescue it.

The final postcard in this series was drawn by the well-known French artist Georges Bigot and issued in Europe with no extended caption. It makes the "Yellow Peril" animus present in other Russian graphics seen here—the yellow dog, the "macaque" or monkey—absolutely central, and introduces an original text for Russian consumption. Where the French postcard labeled the globe "The Asian Empire," the Russian version reads "The Dream of a Japanese."