TOKYO: Exactly 100 years ago, Japan's navy attacked a Russian fleet, unleashing the Russo-Japanese War which ended with the first victory by an Asian nation over European colonialism, and propelled newly-modernized Japan into the ranks of the great powers.

As a reminder of a more self-confident and assertive country, the centenary is an occasion for the Japanese to rethink their place on the international stage as they send soldiers to a war zone for the first time since World War II, analysts said.

"It provides a very important lesson for contemporary Japan... then an independent country," said professor Shinji Yokote, a specialist in Russian relations at Tokyo's prestigious Keio University.

He said, "most Japanese think," Japan now is no more than "half" independent. Since the end of the Cold War during which Tokyo's preoccupation was the economy, with Washington looking after defence and diplomacy, Japan has rediscovered a margin for manoeuvre.

"The dispatch of the Self Defence Forces (to Iraq) testifies to its new way of thinking about its place in the world," Yokote said. The anniversary has also inspired symposia on themes such as; "The Russo-Japanese War: a re-examination of Japan's national strategy."

Fought to determine who should control Manchuria and Korea, the war broke out on February 8, 1904, when Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet harboured at Port Arthur at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, although war was not declared until February 10.

"Most Japanese feel this war was necessary to preserve our independence," because Japan might have been the next prize eyed by the Russians," Yokote said. With Japan's victory in September 1905, its prestige in the eyes of other colonized peoples in the region reached its peak, only to be tarnished by the annexation of Korea in 1910.

"The Russo-Japanese War had a positive psychological impact on several Asian countries," said Shigeki Hakamada, a Russian specialist at Tokyo's Aoyama Gakuin University.

The perception the Japanese have of this key episode in their history and the way in which it is taught in schools has changed, however. Until the end of World War II, Japan commemorated the Battle of Mukden in March 1905 and the naval engagement near Tsushima island in May that year as Army Day and Fleet Day.

The commanders, General Nogi and Admiral Togo were national heroes. The mood of post-war "repentance" in 1945 gave rise to a new, negative perception of the earlier conflict as Japan's "first aggression" which led to "terrible defeat" in World War II, according to Yokote.

The names of the victorious commanders disappeared from the textbooks. There is a view that the external factors contributing to Japan's victory such as tsarist Russia's internal unrest and Britain's indirect support for its imperialist rival's enemy, were underestimated.

"Japan became overly confident about its military might. As a result, it ceased to be level-headed about its own potential, which led it down the road to military domination and external expansion," said the liberal Asahi Shimbun daily in a January 1 editorial on the plan to send troops to Iraq.

Interest in the war was revived in the early 1970s with the publication of Ryotaro Shiba's historical novel "Saka no ue no kumo" ("Cloud above the hill"). Although unrelated to the war, to this day Tokyo and Moscow have a territorial dispute over sovereignty of a group of islands at the south end of the Kuril chain, claimed by Japan as its Northern Territories but seized by Soviet forces in 1945.

Japan is still only focused on this issue, the sole object of its Cold War diplomacy, said Keio University's Yokote. Confronted by fears of a nuclear-armed North Korea and China's growing military power, "we not only need the help of the United States but also cooperation with Russia," he said, noting that Moscow's close ties with Beijing and Pyongyang would be "useful" for Tokyo.

"We should not rely solely on the United States. We should be making vigorous diplomatic efforts to secure peace across the Asian landmass," the Asahi editorial said for its part. -AFP