Bhai @
kalu_miah
Kamikaze (from
Kami - "
god" and
kaze - "
wind") means
'divine wind' in Japanese. It refers to the typhoon which saved Japan from a Mongol invasion fleet in 1281.
The First Invasion, 1274
From the port of Masan in southern Korea, the Mongols and their subjects launched a step-wise attack on Japan in the autumn of 1274. Hundreds of large ships, and an even larger number of small boats set out into the Sea of Japan. (The exact number of vessels is unknown; estimates range between 500 and 900.)
First, the invaders seized the islands of Tsushima and Iki, which lay about halfway between the tip of the Korean peninsula and the main islands of Japan. Quickly overcoming desperate resistance from the islands' approximately 300 Japanese residents, the Mongol troops slaughtered them all and sailed on to the east.
On November 18, the Mongol armada reached Hakata Bay, near the present-day city of Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu. Much of our knowledge about the details of this invasion come from a
scroll which was commissioned by the samurai Takezaki Suenaga, who fought against the Mongols in both campaigns.
Suenaga relates that the samurai army set out to fight according to their code of
bushido; a warrior would step out, announce his name and lineage, and prepare for one-on-one combat with a foe. Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Mongols were not familiar with the code. When a lone samurai stepped forward to challenge them, the Mongols would simply attack him en masse, much like ants swarming a beetle.
To make matters worse for the Japanese, the Yuan forces also used poison-tipped arrows, catapult-launched explosive shells, and a shorter bow that was accurate at twice the range of the samurai's longbows. In addition, the Mongols fought in units, rather than each man for himself. Drumbeats relayed the orders guiding their precisely coordinated attacks. All of this was new to the samurai - often fatally so.
Takezaki Suenaga and the three other warriors from his household were all unhorsed in the fighting, and each sustained serious wounds that day. A late charge by over 100 Japanese reinforcements was all that saved Suenaga and his men. The injured samurai drew back a few miles from the bay for the night, determined to renew their nearly hopeless defense in the morning. As night fell, a driving wind and heavy rain began to lash the coast.
Unbeknownst to the Japanese defenders, the Chinese and Korean sailors on board Kublai Khan's ships were busy persuading the Mongolian generals to let them weigh anchor and head further out to sea. They worried that the strong wind and high surf would drive their ships aground in Hakata Bay.
The Mongols relented, and the great armada sailed out into open waters - straight into the arms of an approaching typhoon.
Two days later, a third of the Yuan ships lay on the bottom of the Pacific, and perhaps 13,000 of Kublai Khan's soldiers and sailors had drowned. The battered survivors limped home, and Japan was spared the Great Khan's dominion... for the time being.
The Second Invasion, 1281:
In the spring of 1281, the Japanese got word that a second Yuan invasion force was coming their way. The waiting samurai sharpened their swords and prayed to Hachiman, the Shinto god of war.
Kublai Khan was determined to smash Japan this time. He knew that his defeat seven years earlier had been simple bad luck, due more to the weather than to any extraordinary fighting prowess of the samurai.
With more forewarning of this second attack, Japan was able to muster 40,000 samurai and other fighting men. They assembled behind the defensive wall at Hakata Bay, their eyes trained to the west.
The Mongols sent two separate forces this time; an impressive force of 900 ships containing 40,000 Korean, Chinese, and Mongol troops set out from Masan, while an even larger force of 100,000 sailed from southern China in 3,500 ships. The Ministry for Conquering Japan's plan called for an overwhelming coordinated attack from the combined imperial Yuan fleets.
The Korean fleet reached Hakata Bay on June 23, 1281, but the ships from China were nowhere to be seen. The smaller division of the Yuan army was unable to breach the Japanese defensive wall, so a stationary battle evolved. Samurai would row out to the Mongol ships in small boats under cover of darkness, attack the Chinese and Korean troops, set fire to the ships, and then row back to land.
These night-time raids demoralized the Mongols' conscripts, some of whom had only recently been conquered and had no love for the emperor. A stalemate between the evenly-matched foes lasted for 50 days, as the Korean fleet waited for the expected Chinese reinforcements.
On August 12, the Mongols' main fleet landed to 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. With little hope of survival, and little thought of reward if they triumphed, the Japanese samurai fought on with desperate bravery.
Japan's Miracle:
They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and in this case, it's certainly true. Just when it appeared that the samurai would be exterminated and Japan crushed under the Mongol yoke, an incredible, even miraculous event took place.
On August 15, 1281, a second typhoon roared ashore at Kyushu. Of the khan's 4,400 ships, only a few hundred rode out the towering waves and vicious winds.
Nearly all of the invaders drowned in the storm; those few thousand who made it to shore were hunted and killed without mercy by the samurai. Very few ever returned to tell the tale at Dadu.
The Aftermath:
The Japanese believed that their gods had sent the storms to preserve Japan from the Mongols. They called the two storms
kamikaze or "divine winds." Kublai Khan seemed to agree that Japan was protected by supernatural forces; he abandoned the idea of conquering the island nation.
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. 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 samurai). Suenaga did not even try to seek payment, this time; instead he commissioned the scroll as a record of his own accomplishments during both invasions.
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, the samurai refused to rally to the military leaders' defense.
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 Japan's warriors drew strength and inspiration from the legend for centuries.
