Tucked away in a tiny corner of Matsuyama, on a hillside not too far from the famous Dogo Onsen hot springs resort, lies a unique graveyard. Inside lie gravestones for 98 Russian POWs who died during the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, a somber reminder of a time the city is nevertheless generally eager to remember, and occasionally romanticize.

The Russo-Japanese War, which was fought on China's Liaodong Peninsula at Port Arthur (modern Dalian) as well as at sea, woke many in the West up to the fact that Japan, which only a few decades earlier seemed to be an ancient, technologically backward country, was now a modern military power in the Pacific.

The exploits of the Japanese army and especially the navy, culminating in the Battle of Tsushima in late May 1905 in which Russia's Baltic Fleet was sunk, meant that between the time war was declared in February 1904 and the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended it in September 1905, more than 70,000 Russian POWs had been brought to Japan and placed in up to 29 camps.