Japan: Japanese propaganda woodcut print showing Tsar Nicholas II waking from a nightmare of the battered and wounded Russian forces returning from battle. By Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915), c. 1904-1905, Library of Congress. The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 ??5 September 1905) was the first great war of the 20th century and grew out of the competing imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea.