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M A D E B Y : L E A N D R O Q U E I R O Z R O D E I A

Mongol Invasions to Japan

The Prelude

Before the first Mongol-Japanese contact, the Mongol Empire ruled by Kublai Khan (1215-1294) already expanded itself to Korea, and to some parts of eastern europe, making it the largest empire that human history has ever seen.

The Message

In 1266 the Mongol leader, Kublai Khan paused his campaign to subdue all of China, and sent messengers to Japan and also addressed the emperor of Japan as “ The ruler of a small country" and advised the Japanese sovereign to pay him tribute, or else he would launch an attack.

For the five next years, Khan sent his messengers to Japan that weren't allowed by the shogun to even land in the main island of Honshu, and always returned without answer.

Kublai Khan

Painting Movie actor

The Empire

In 1271, Kublai Khan defeated the Song Dynasty and declared himself the first emperor of China's Yuan Dynasty.

A grandson of Genghis Khan ruled over much of China plus Mongolia and Korea while his uncles and cousins controlled an empire that stretched from Hungary in the west to the Pacific coast of Siberia in the east.

The great khans of the Mongol Empire did not tolerate impudence from their neighbors.

The Invasion

In 1272 the Mongol leader Kublai Khan already wanted to launch an attack to Japan but his advisors always advised the great leader to bide his time until a proper armada of ships could be built.

During this time, the Mongols ordered the construction of 300 to 600 vessels from the shipyards of Southern China and Korea, and conscripted an army of approximately 40.000 men, being most of them either Chinese or Korean origin despite the generals and officers being Mongolian.

The Invasion

From the port of Masan located in South Korea, the Mongols and their subjects launched an attack on Japan in the autumn of 1274 with approximately 500 to 900 large and small ships.

When the Mongols arrived, they first seized the islands of Tsushima and Iki which was on the way to the Japanese main islands, which only contained a resistance of 300 Japanese residents which the Mongols slaughtered and kept on sailing east.

The Invasion

Mongols landing on Japanese shores

The Invasion

On November 18, 1274, the Mongol army reached Hakata bay in the island of Kyushu.

The Japanese would fight according to their code of Bushido which implied for an warrior to step out and announce his name and lineage and only after that the one-on-one combat would begin.

Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Mongols had no such thing has a code of honor, and simply attacked when a samurai tried to introduce himself to the foe.

The Invasion

A Samurai who got attacked after introducing himself according to his code

The Invasion

To make things darker, not only did the Mongols had short bows with poisonous arrows, that were accurate at twice the range of the Japanese longbows, but also explosives which would land in Japanese soil due to the catapults Mongols used from their large ships, causing a quick morale shock to the Japanese.

Mongols also fought in small divisions instead of each man for itself which quickly gave the Mongols numeric advantage over the Japanese and later on, the decisive victory over the Samurais.

The Invasion

Unknown to the Japanese, the Mongol armada after their crushing victory sailed back to sea, and two days later a typhoon occurred in the Pacific, killing around 13.000 of Kublai Khan men.

The remaining battered survivors sailed back home, and Japan was safe from the Mongols from the time being.

Kamikaze (Divine Wind)

The Japanese resistance alongside with the typhoon dispatching the Mongols

The Invasion

While Kublai Khan was grumbling about his naval force misfortunes, a wounded Samurai named Takesaki Suenaga that barely got alive from the battle, waited for the Bakufuin Kamakura to reward them for their valour against the Mongol offensive.

But since there was no reward over an invasion since the invaders were outsiders, the Bakufu had no way to pay the samurais for their effort, and Suenaga travelled for 2 months to the Kamakura Shogun’s to plead the case in person, and only 120 samurais out of the 10.000 who fought, were rewarded…

The Answer

While Suenaga was waiting in the court making it’s case, Kublai Khan sent a six-man delegation, demanding the Japanese emperor presence in Dadu and kowtow to Kublai Khan himself (a style of prostration or worship in China).

The Japanese replied back by beheading the Chinese diplomats sent by Kublai Khan, a terrible infringement of the Mongol law.

The 2nd Invasion

After such events, Japan was now focused for a second attack by leading a census of all available weaponry and soldiers in the island of Kyushu and additionally the task of making a defensive stone wall around the Hakata bay, 5 to 15 feet tall, and 25 miles long.

The wall took 5 years to build, and an 2nd invasion occurred 7 years later after the 1st invasion, at 1281. (1274 – 1281).

The 2nd Invasion

A short sample of the 25 mile long stone wall and other defensive constructions build by the Japanese against the 2nd Mongol invasion, in 1281

The 2nd Invasion

In the spring of 1281, the Japanese got word that a second Mongol invasion force was coming their way.

The waiting samurai sharpened their swords and prayed to Hachiman, the Shinto god of war.

The 2nd Invasion

Kublai Khan was determined to smash Japan this time because he knew that his defeat seven years earlier had been simple bad luck, due to the weather than to any extraordinary fighting skill of the Samurai.

With more forewarning of this second attack, Japan was able to muster 40,000 samurai and other fighting men and assembled behind the defensive wall build at Hakata Bay.

The 2nd Invasion

Japanese soldiers getting ready for the coastal defense

The 2nd Invasion

The Mongols this time sent two separated forces this time, an impressive force of 900 ships containing 40,000 Koreans, Chinese and Mongols sent from Masan, while an even larger force of 100.000 sailed from Southern China, in 3,500 ships.

The Mongol fleet sent from Korea reached Japan, while the fleet sent by China was nowhere to be seen.

The 2nd Invasion

The fleet sent from Korea and it’s troops was unable to breach the most well prepared Japanese defensive, and a stationary battle evolved with the decisive advantage for the Japanese due to their defensive constructions.

Few groups of Samurais would commit night-raids and killed and destroyed some of the Mongol ships and then strategically retreating.

The Night Raids

Japanese samurai raiding the Mongol fleet ships

The 2nd Invasion

On August 12, the Mongol main fleet landed on the west of Hakata Bay.

Now faced with a force more than three times as large as their own, the Samurai were in serious danger of being overrun and slaughtered.

Despite the numeric superiority, the Japanese thanks to all their defensive effort before the invasion, still repulsed the Mongols back to their fleets.

Japan’s Miracle

After the 2nd invasion failed, and the Mongol army being repulsed back to open waters, a second typhoon occurred on August 15th (three days later) destroying around 2500 of Khan’s ships.

Nearly all of the invaders drowned in the storm and those few thousand who made it to shore were hunted and killed without mercy by the Japanese.

The 2nd typhoon

The 2nd typhoon after the failed 2nd invasion of the Mongol army

Aftermath

The Japanese believed that their gods had sent the storms to preserve Japan from the Mongols.

They called the two typhoons Kamikaze or Divine Winds and Kublai Khan seemed to agree that Japan was protected by supernatural forces, making him to abandon the idea of conquering the archipelago.

Aftermath

For the Kamakura Bakufu, however, the outcome was disastrous. Once again the samurai demanded payment for the three months they'd spent warding off the Mongols and in addition, this time the priests who had prayed for divine protection added their own payment demands, citing the typhoons as evidence of the effectiveness of their prayers.

The Bakufu still had little to dispense, and what disposable riches they had went to the priests (who held more influence in the capital than the Samurais).

Aftermath

Dissatisfaction with the Kamakura Bakufu festered among the ranks of the samurai over the following decades. When a strong emperor, Go-Daigo, rose in 1318 and challenged the authority of the Bakufu.

After a complex civil war lasting 15 years, the Kamakura Bakufu was defeated and the Ashikaga Shogunate assumed power over Japan. The Ashikaga family and all the other samurai passed down the story of the kamikaze, and Japanese drew strength and inspiration from the legend for centuries.

Aftermath

As late as World War II (1939-1945), Japanese imperial troops invoked the kamikaze in their battles against the Allied forces in the Pacific.

Kamikaze Zero Pilots

Thank you for watching this PowerPoint Made by: Leandro Queiroz Rodeia