|
Japan participated in World War I from 1914 to 1918 in an alliance with Entente Powers and played an important role in securing the sea lanes in the West Pacific and Indian Oceans against the Imperial German Navy. Politically, Japan seized the opportunity to expand its sphere of influence in China, and to gain recognition as a great power in postwar geopolitics. Japan's military seized German possessions in the Pacific and East Asia, but there was no large-scale mobilization of the economy.〔Frederick R. Dickinson, ''War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914-1919'' (1999)〕 Foreign Minister Katō Takaaki and Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu wanted to use the opportunity to expand Japanese influence in China. They enlisted Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), then in exile in Japan, but they had little success.〔Albert A. Altman and Harold Z. Schiffrin, "Sun Yat-Sen and the Japanese, 1914-16," ''Modern Asian Studies'', (July 1972) 6#4 pp 385-400 〕 The Imperial Japanese Navy, a nearly autonomous bureaucratic institution, made its own decision to undertake expansion in the Pacific. It captured Germany's Micronesian territories north of the equator, and ruled the islands until 1921. The operation gave the Navy a rationale for enlarging its budget to double the Army budget and expanding the fleet. The Navy thus gained significant political influence over national and international affairs.〔J.C. Schencking, "Bureaucratic Politics, Military Budgets and Japan's Southern Advance: The Imperial Navy’s Seizure of German Micronesia in the First World War," ''War in History,'' (July 1998) 5#3 pp 308-326〕 ==Events of 1914== In the first week of World War I Japan proposed to the United Kingdom, its ally since 1902, that Japan would enter the war if it could take Germany's Pacific territories. On 7 August 1914, the British government officially asked Japan for assistance in destroying the raiders from the Imperial German Navy in and around Chinese waters. Japan sent Germany an ultimatum on 14 August 1914, which went unanswered; Japan then formally declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914. As Vienna refused to withdraw the Austro-Hungarian cruiser from Tsingtao, Japan declared war on Austria-Hungary, too, on 25 August 1914.〔Mizokami, Kyle, "(Japan’s baptism of fire: World War I put country on a collision course with West )", ''The Japan Times'', 27 July 2014〕 Japanese forces quickly occupied German-leased territories in the Far East. On 2 September 1914, Japanese forces landed on China's Shandong province and surrounded the German settlement at Tsingtao (Qingdao). During October, acting virtually independently of the civil government, the Imperial Japanese Navy seized several of Germany's island colonies in the Pacific - the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands - with virtually no resistance. The Japanese Navy conducted the world's first naval-launched air raids against German-held land targets in Shandong province and ships in Qiaozhou Bay from the seaplane-carrier ''Wakamiya''. On 6 September 1914 a seaplane launched by ''Wakamiya'' unsuccessfully attacked the Austro-Hungarian cruiser ''Kaiserin Elisabeth'' and the German gunboat ''Jaguar'' with bombs The Siege of Tsingtao concluded with the surrender of German colonial forces on 7 November 1914. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Japan during World War I」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|