Ridiculing the Russian Foe

While many Japanese postcards conveyed respect for the Russian foe, an equal number were disdainful. In this sample, for example, the enemy is portrayed as retreating by train under misleading Red Cross flags, surrendering on the battlefield, fleeing so precipitously that they left their battle flag behind, running away so fast that they were almost out of sight, abjectly “biting the bullet,” sitting backwards on their cavalry horses so that retreating appeared to be charging, and so on. The last postcard in this run depicts that most familiar of scenes anywhere: children playing war games at home, in which the enemy behaves in a cowardly manner.

The inclusion of English-language captions on some of these postcards reveals that the intended audience was not just Japanese. Rather—as with almost all picture postcards of the war—the target audience was global.