Abstract
On 28 June 1914, Bosnian Serbian nationalist extremist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austria–Hungary Empire, and his wife Sophie von Chotkovato, in the city of Sarajevo in the empire’s province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. A chain reaction of declarations of war soon followed, and within two months all the great powers of Europe found themselves at war. It was to be the beginning of a particularly savage war that would brutally and senselessly kill more than 15 million people before an armistice was signed on 11 November 1918. The war produced material destruction and a catastrophic loss of life on a scale unmatched up to that time.
Japan is the God of Japan. The strength this people draws from religion is a strength drawn from its own bowels; its heroes are great men from the past, nature and the fatherland. It becomes auto-adoration.
Enrico Corradini, “Una nazione,” Il Regno, June 1914
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Skya, W.A. (2015). The Great European War and the Rise of Radical Shintō Ultranationalism in Japan. In: Rosenthal, L., Rodic, V. (eds) The New Nationalism and the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137462787_8
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