As the armies of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente went off to war, governments in Asia and Asia Minor met to consider the possibility of their participation. Since 1902, Japan had an alliance with Great Britain, one that committed it to “strict neutrality” in case Great Britain became “involved in war with another Power.” What leaders in Tokyo saw as the great “confusion” in Europe could spell opportunity for Japan to assert itself as the “chief nation of the Orient.” Foreign Minister Katō Takaaki and a handful of his closest advisors single-handedly took the government into the war.

And in Constantinople, a handful of Young Turk leaders, Enver Bey, Talât Bey, Ahmed Cemal Pasha, and Helil Bey, decided that alliance with Germany would best serve their nation's interests. Germany became their last and unavoidable choice – to establish their economic independence, to abolish the Anglo-French financial “capitulations,” and to secure their crumbling empire.

Japan

The Japanese Cabinet decided on war against Germany on 8 August, just four days after Britain cut ties with Berlin. Why did Japan, so far from the principal theater of conflict, declare war on Germany? Elder statesman Inoue Kaoru spoke of the outbreak of war in Europe as “divine aid,” this based on his sense of widespread exhilaration in Tokyo. Just as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George hailed the chance to rediscover “the great peaks” of “Honour, Duty, Patriotism,” Japanese adventurer Ioki Ryōzō praised the “awakening” of the Japanese from their petty political battles, worship of money, “anti-state nihilism,” “naturalism,” and “vulgar sensualism.”