The Mongol Attack on Kyushu: Ancient Japan's Near Brush with Conquest

Students of Asian and world history likely remember the Mongol waves of conquest in the 1200s. Virtually all of Asia fell to the various Mongol leaders - Japan was one of the few, if not the only, nation that survived the Mongol hordes. However, had certain events not unfolded, Japan would likely be a different place than it is today. These invasions are important to Japanese and world history because they showed that there was a limit to the Khan's greed, and also reinforced Japan's belief that the nation was protected and blessed by the gods - an attitude which shaped the Japanese psyche into modern times.

Prelude

The stage was set for these events in 1231, when present-day Korea was conquered. Three decades of fighting followed, with Korea eventually becoming a Mongolian dependency. Korea, by virtue of location, was the Khan's jumping-off point for naval invasions and a recruitment post for conscripts. However, Korea wasn't very heavily populated, and the Mongols were known for their sheer numbers in addition to brutality.

In 1260, the problem of numbers was solved, when Kublai Khan declared himself the Emperor of China. The Chinese peasantry would provide a practically infinite source of manpower. The capital of Peking (present-day Beijing) was established in 1264, and shortly afterwards, Japan rejected emissaries who requested that Japan submit to Mongol rule and pay tribute or face an invasion. In the years following, many more emissaries came, and Japan began preparing in truth for a coming invasion. All daimyo who had land on Kyushu (Japan's western island closest to mainland Asia) returned to their provinces, migrated further west to the coast and began fortifying the most likely landing points. Many Shinto ceremonies and prayer services were held, and most government functions were postponed to deal with the threat.

The Battle of Bun'ei

According to George Sansom, the invading fleet started out in 1274, landing at Hakata Bay in early to mid-February with a relatively small number of troops, compared to the large Japanese army. The reason the fighting was so even, despite the uneven numbers, was for several reasons: first, the samurai hadn't had a major conflict in about fifty years (Sansom), so were inexperienced. Secondly, they didn't know how to strategically manage a force of the size they had - the logistics of it were undeveloped. Most importantly, the fighting styles of the two armies were completely different. The Mongols were tightly disciplined and group-oriented, whereas the samurai were used to fighting battles that were more a collection of single duels than anything else. Samurai were known to break ranks, charging at the enemy and shouting their names, seeking a worthy opponent on the other side. The samurai would duel to the death with katanas, the winner taking the loser's head and tagging it to prove he had indeed killed his adversary. At the end of the battle, the winning general would tally the heads and reward his men according to the number of enemies killed. Basically put, samurai armies were a group of individual warriors, albeit exceptionally skilled ones.

Were it not for the first kamikaze, or divine wind (a storm cropped up on the first night of the fighting), the above factors would have caused the loss of Kyushu and therefore the rest of Japan as the Mongols gained a foothold. The Mongol and Chinese ship captains wanted to avoid their ships sinking and being trapped on Japanese shores, so the majority of them left the island. The samurai chased down the remainder and killed them in the surf.

Preparations and the Battle of Kouan

In 1276 (Sansom) the Kyushu samurai built a series of fortresses and defensive walls to repel the next Mongol attack, which landed on Tsushima on 9 June, 1281. Nearby Ikishima fell five days later. On the 21st, the Mongols made landfall on Kyushu. The main part of the force was located at Hakata Bay, and the rest scattered across various landing points at Kyushu. For the whole of the summer, until mid-August, there were intermittent attacks, until a storm again swept away the Mongol invaders. The Japanese, thinking it was no coincidence that they had been saved by nature both times, named this event the kamikaze.

Japan carried the attitude of divine protection throughout their history from that point, until the end of World War II. This fierce devotion and religious belief enabled Japanese soldiers (who carried their family katanas into battle often) to commit suicidal attacks such as the kamikaze planes, as the Buddhist belief in reincarnation taught that warriors who died in battle could be reincarnated in future to serve again.

Sources:

Sansom, George, A History of Japan to 1334, Stanford University Press, 1958