The Mongol Invasions of Japan, 1274 and 1281

Osprey Campaign #217

by Stephen Turnbull, Richard Hook (Illustrator)

The two attempts by Khubilai Khan, the Mongol Emperor of China, to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281 represent unique events in the history of both countries. It pitted the samurai of Japan against the fierce warriors of the steppes who had conquered half the known world.

The Mongol conquest of Korea left them with a considerable quantity of maritime resources, which enabled them to thin seriously for the first time about crossing the Tsushima strait between Korea and Japan with an army of invasion. The first invasion, which began with savage raiding on the islands of Tsushima and Iki, made a landfall at Hakata Bay and forced the samurai defenders back inland. Luckily for the Japanese defenders, a storm scattered the Mongol invasion fleet, leading them to abandon this attempt.

In the intervening years the Japanese made defensive preparation, and the Mongol increased their fleet and army, so that the second invasion involved one of the largest seaborne expeditions in world history up to that time. This attempt was aimed at the same landing site, Hakata Bay, and met stiffer opposition form the new defences and the aggressive Japanese defenders. Forced buy a series of major Japanese raids to stay in their ships at anchor, the Mongol fleet was obliterated by a typhoon - the kami kaze (divine wind) - for the loss of as many as 90 per cent of the invaders. Although further preparations were made for an assault by the Mongols at the end of the 13ht and beginning of the 14th centuries, this proved to be the last realistic threat of an invasion of the home islands till 1945.

Genres: History, Military History, Japan, Japanese History, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, Medieval History

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Stephen Richard Turnbull is British a historian specializing in eastern military history, especially the samurai of Japan. His books are mainly on Japanese and Mongolian subjects. He attended Cambridge University where he gained his first degree. He currently holds an MA in Theology, MA in Military History and a PhD from the University of Leeds where he is currently a lecturer in Far Eastern Religions. He has also written a number of books on other medieval topics. He is semi-retired but still holds the post of Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies at Akita International University in Japan.

Reviews

[Joe Krakovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE MONGOL INVASIONS OF JAPAN 1274 AND 1281 not only tells the story of those battles and the events leading up to them, but gives one a little more understanding of certain events that were to happen in 1944 and 1945.

The great Khubilai Khan inherited a vast empire from his grandfather Genghis Khan. Being warriors of the steppe, they fought with their excellent compound bows while mounted on sturdy horses. The lands they conquered stretched from that of the Germanic Teutonic Knights to the shores of Japan. The funny thing was, neither the Teutonic Knights nor the Japanese Samurai knew the other even existed. It was while the Mongols under Khan were in the process of conquering China that the first invasion was sent to Japan.

As with other empire builders, conquered people were made to provide warriors for their masters. In this case Koreans would supply not only warriors but ships as well. Things being what they were, the Koreans had no love for the Japanese due to the Japanese pirate activity plaguing her shores. So when all was ready, the invasion fleet set sail.

The Japanese weren't really taken by surprise, and they fanatically fought the Mongols coming ashore across the invasion beach, but there were just too many of them.

This might be a good time to mention a little something about the fighting. The Japanese were accustomed to individuals seeking fame through individual combat. The Mongols had close order ranks of foot soldiers. In spite of what Hollywood would have you believe, it was the bow which was the premier weapon of the Samurai. The sword gained its notoriety later. The Japanese bow was very long but the grip was only about a third of the way up. In order to use it from horseback, the samurai would notch the arrow and raise his hands above his head. As he lowered them he would pull back on the string and by the time it was level he would release. And the samurai was an excellent marksman. The Mongols simply sent showers of arrows to rain down upon the Japanese. Besides the cultural shock the Mongols fired exploding bombs by catapults. These paper and clay bombs contained gunpowder and metal fragments which frightened and wounded both man and beast.

The Mongols pushed the Japanese back inland where they would make their stand. Whether it was because this invasion was simply a recon in force or because a Japanese arrow slew a high ranking general the Mongols withdrew and sailed back to Korea.

Years later, after conquering the rest of China, the Mongols launched another invasion of Japan with two fleets. The first one to reach Japan attacked first without waiting for the second one. Once more they fought their way ashore, over the same beach. This time the Japanese were waiting for them behind a wall they had built. Being fought to a standstill the Mongols retreated back to their ships. The Japanese then took the fighting to them using their smaller craft. In time the other fleet came and the Mongols chained their ships together as protection from the smaller ship raids. It was while these ships were preparing for their landings that the storm came. In answer to the prayers of the Japanese Monks, the typhoon came that smashed the Mongol fleet. Thus it was named the kamikaze (divine wind). What was left of the Mongol fleet returned from whence they came while the samurai butchered the helpless survivors of the storm.

Centuries later other invasion fleets were approaching Japan. Hoping to mimic the destructive power of the divine wind of ages past, Japanese aviators took to the sky in their various planes with the intention of crashing them into enemy ships. Many ships were damaged and some sunk, but the outcome was different this time as Japan entered the nuclear age.

Maps and illustrations included.

[Steve]

A portion of the Moko Shurai Ekotoba, late 13th - early 14th century

The Japanese are fierce and do not fear death....Ten Japanese soldiers will fight, even if it is against an enemy force of one hundred. They will forfeit their lives in battle even if they are unable to win. - Zheng Sixiao (1241-1318)

Nota bene: This is a twofer.

It took the Mongol Golden Horde seventy long years to carry out the conquest of China begun by Genghis Khan and completed by his grandson, Khubilai, who declared himself the Emperor of China in 1271, thereby founding the Yuan dynasty. Of course, the Mongols were busy conquering most of the rest of Eurasia, as well, including Korea, where they heard tales of islands to the East rich with gold. After sending a series of increasingly threatening diplomatic missions to Japan, Khubilai forced the Koreans to build a huge fleet of a thousand ships for the Mongols and man it with sailors, since the Mongols had absolutely no naval experience. A revolt by the Koreans to this extremely onerous command was swiftly crushed.

In Japan the Kamakura bakufu was in charge; it was a rule by military overlords in the name of a figurehead emperor,(*) but the imperial court, the shogun and the Hojo regent were all outraged by the Mongols' embassies and refused to receive or respond to them. The Japanese made some preparations, but the first invasion in 1274 caught them in a weak position.




In this map The Empire of the Great Khan is just the portion directly ruled by Khubilai. His relatives were busy in Central Asia and, ultimately, points much further west.


After sweeping away the small local forces on the islands of Tsushima and Iki and massacring most of the inhabitants, the Mongols and the Koreans they had impressed into their service landed on the main southern island of Kyushu,(**) where after a brief series of engagements in which both sides learned about the unusual tactics of their opponents the Mongol army boarded their ships (when one of their generals was shot in the face) and returned to Korea, passing through at least one violent storm. It thus seems that this first encounter was just a reconnaissance in force, but the combination of fighting and storm(s) entailed that only two-thirds of the original force landed safely in Korea.

It was an entirely different matter in 1281, when the Mongols sent two huge fleets against Kyushu, including a sizable Chinese contingent. But after beheading three Mongol envoys sent in 1275, the Japanese had made more serious preparations this time, especially after they had heard that the Southern Sung capital of Hangzhou had capitulated to the Mongols. They had actually planned a preemptory invasion of Korea that was not carried out, but the vessels they had constructed or accumulated proved to be essential in the upcoming defense of Japan.

The commanders of the two Mongol fleets, one sailing from Korea and the other from China, made a series of tactical errors that resulted in the Korean fleet being unable to land effectively and finding itself the brunt of multiple raids by Japanese in small vessels. The ferocity and efficacy of these raids obliged the Korean fleet to withdraw to Iki, where swarms of eager Japanese descended upon them in their small boats. Finally, the much larger Chinese fleet arrived to aid the discomfited Koreans, and the situation turned against the Japanese. The now monstrous Mongol fleet moved to an undefended part of the Kyushu coast in order to land its army; the Japanese mosquito swarm collected and did what it could. It was at this point the Japanese gods (kami) stepped in and sent the typhoon soon to go down in Japanese history as the kamikaze, which sundered both of the Mongol armadas and hurled their crushed vessels beneath the violent waves of Imari Bay; portions of the remains of these armadas have been found and studied by submarine archaeologists since the 1980's. Around 30 percent of the Koreans and between 60 and 90 percent (!) of the Chinese and Mongols did not return home. The event was so traumatic in China that even Marco Polo mentioned it in his Travels - probably the first mention of Japan in any European text.




Artist's reconstruction of one of the ships wrecked during the invasion of 1281 with scale representations of the Japanese boats


A remarkable contemporary witness to the Mongol invasions of Japan is the Moko Shurai Ekotoba (Mongol Invasion Scrolls), an illustrated text commissioned by Takezaki Suenaga, an apparently quite impetuous, minor samurai commander who took part in resisting both invasions and then exerted at least as much effort in getting what he viewed as a suitable reward from the bakufu.(***) This text is reproduced (regrettably, only in black and white), translated and thoroughly commented by Thomas Conlan in the very scholarly In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Takezaki Suenaga's Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan (2001), which also includes translations of other relevant, closely contemporary texts. In order to accommodate the original form of the scrolls, which read, of course, from right to left, this book is printed back to front! The last page of the book is the first page of the text, etc. A most unusual reading experience for this very Western reader. To supplement these witnesses I also read Stephen Turnbull's The Mongol Invasions of Japan 1274 and 1281 (2010), a slender, heavily illustrated text that provides a bit of the background and much of the tactics and execution of the engagements.(4*) Happily for me, the first page was the first page.



(*) In fact, the shogun had also become a figurehead by then; the head of the Hojo clan was actually running the bakufu as shikken (regent), but that was just replacing one ruling family of samurai by another.

(**) Two contemporary Japanese sources report that on Iki the Mongols captured civilians, threaded them together with a rope through holes made in their hands and then used them as human shields against the fine marksmanship of the Japanese archers.

(***) Bowdoin College has digitalized the various versions of the scrolls and made them available online here: http://www.bowdoin.edu/mongol-scrolls/

(4*) Turnbull's book appears in a series of similar books by Osprey Press aimed primarily at persons interested in martial history. Because I had had a very rewarding experience reading his full scale book Samurai Invasion: Japan's Korean War 1592 -1598, I thought I would give this book a try, even though its focus on weapons, tactics and the course of the engagements is rather narrow. Within this limited scope the book is quite acceptable.

[Lee Madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Niche but excellent read about the two mongol invasions of Japan. Excellent accompaniment to the Ghost of Tsushima video game if you want more of the history and context 😀

[Tiago Martins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent explanation of the Mongol invasions of Japan. Not only militarly but geostrategically. Mongol rulers and their strategy was one of destruction and pillage with a new "civilized" face against the nationalistic empire of Japan and his rulers.

Japanese shoguns were in previous contact with the Renaissance Song Dynasty, which gave them the power and cultural freedom to pursue a patriotic defense of their land. Great book!

[Werewolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mongolz Divinely Defeat

Interesting that the Great Khan was not intimidated by the seas as Der Fuhrer had been. The Mongols decimated Empirez (Muslim, Chinese). Fortunately enough, the demise of Genghis saved Europe from similar fates.

[Igor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book and the rest of the books of the Osprey Publishing are nice. Besides the resumed information, the paintings help the reader to immerse themselves into the fighting and context.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turnbull expertly explains the two Mongol efforts to invade Japan and the reasons for their failures. He succeeds in moving the emphasis from natural forces to Japanese resistance.