La diplomazia giapponese di fronte alla prima guerra mondiale: dalla dichiarazione alle “ventuno domande”

Abstract

The First World War is often seen by the Japanese perspective as the “Nippo-German War” since it cannot be understood as a conflict opposing Japan to the rest of the world, or which threw the country into a specific alliance based on shared principles and common strategic interests. It is a very revealing description, for it implies that this was a brief, narrow bilateral conflict that was limited to East Asia in the autumn of 1914 rather than being part of the profound global clash between two opposing alliance systems that lasted for four long years. This contribution aims to analyse Japan’s diplomatic dimension within the Great War years by retracing the history of related domestic and international aspects, such as the country’s Declaration of War and the “Twenty-One Demands” to China. These events became for Japan the opportunity to assert itself on the global scene as the unique non-Western military power engaging in realpolitik