The Mongol Invasions of Japan
Kublai Khan sent two fleets against Japan, in 1274 and 1281, and both were wrecked by storms. He had conquered Korea and was completing the conquest of Song China, and sent envoys demanding that Japan submit as a tributary. The Kamakura shogunate refused, and later executed the envoys, which is unusual and was regarded as unforgivable. The first expedition of 1274 carried perhaps 30,000 Mongol, Chinese and Korean troops. It took Tsushima and Iki, landed at Hakata Bay, and beat the samurai in the field with massed infantry, poison-tipped arrows, coordinated drums and gunpowder bombs — Japanese warfare at the time still made room for individual challenges, and this was a different thing entirely. The fleet then withdrew to its ships and was caught by a storm that destroyed much of it. Japan spent seven years building a stone wall some twenty kilometres long around Hakata Bay and organising coastal defence. The second invasion in 1281 was far larger — two fleets, one from Korea and one from south China, perhaps 4,400 ships and 140,000 men, the largest amphibious operation before the twentieth century. The wall held them off the beaches for weeks while small boats raided the anchored fleet at night. A typhoon in August destroyed it, and most of those who reached shore were killed or enslaved. The storms were named kamikaze, the divine wind, and the idea that Japan was divinely protected from invasion outlived its usefulness by six and a half centuries. The shogunate was weakened by having no conquered land to reward its defenders with.
- Year: 1274 CE
- Category: Military
