Dr Chris Harding

The first time, and it happens in quite short order, the first time that an Asian power has had a victory over a white Western power.

And it's hard to underestimate the shock, I think, that goes through Europe.

which is, I think, what really worries a lot of people in Europe, because in the early days of the major restoration, it was nice and it was funny and it was quite amusing to see the Japanese steadily take on these technologies, these institutions, even to things like eating beef and knife and fork, pushing their food around the plate, trying to get used to these things.

It was quaint and it was funny.

And the Japanese, the fact that they were succeeding as a society kind of based on learning from Europe was great for Europeans because clearly then their model is the most civilised and effective one.

But yeah, exactly as you say, to see all that used against them successfully and with a hint, I think by this point, some Westerners have a sense of what gets called the yellow peril.

Not just that hordes of Chinese and Japanese migrants might be flooding the West, but a sense, I think for Japan in particular, that they're modernising on the surface, right?

They look like a modern country, recognisably European or Western in their dress, institutions, technologies, but they have a kind of feudal mindset still.

And that if you combine this feudal mindset, which might be quite irrational, might be willing to spill blood with the latest weaponry,

what you've got is potentially a very scary enemy.

And I think that starts to happen with the Russians, the fact that the Japanese destroy the Russian fleet, the fact that the Japanese are prepared on mainland Asia, a place called Port Arthur, to sacrifice so many of their own men in a battle that, yes, they end up on top in that war, but that doesn't really establish very much, but that they will

throw their men against these weapons, people start, I think, in Europe and the West to worry about the Japanese and about where they might be heading.

And I think, although it worries people in the West, it's also worth coming back to Japan, because we were talking earlier on about people in Japan being unhappy at the direction of travel.

One thing I think people in Japan start to feel is that the Russo-Japanese War

is a war too far.

It's a war they didn't really need to fight.

Maybe it's nice to be a colonial power.

They've got Taiwan from China.

They've got the Korean Peninsula.

Taking on Russia, you start to get people in Japan who are kind of left of center in their politics, who are quite pacifist.