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.