Outlined below are the explanations for the attempts of the Mongols and the Chinese to invade in 1279 and again in 1281. The Mongols and to a lesser extent the Chinese were used to military victories and conquests. The Mongol Empire went from China in the east all the way to the River Danube in the west and very few peoples or countries had been able to resist the invading Mongol hordes. The Japanese during the 13th century were not considered to be militarily powerful. The Mongols and the Chinese as the following will therefore show expected to successfully conquer
Japan in 1279 and 1281. Although outnumbered the Japanese naturally chose to resist both the Mongol and the Chinese invasion attempts leading to enduringly powerful national myths about the divine wind and kamikaze. The concept of kamikaze was revived en masse 650 years after the Mongol and the Chinese invasion attempts as a desperate response to Japan’s declining military and naval fortunes towards the end of the Second World War. The concept of kamikaze may not have been revived at all if the Japanese had been able to take full advantage of their initial successes against the United States and its allies. It will be argued that Japan in the 1930s and the 1940s was an aggressor nation that had imperial ambitions. Japanese national security only became threatened once the United States had regained the initiative. The Japanese military and government knew that desperate measures were needed to stop the United States once the tide had turned the tide of war in its favor.The Mongols had started their substantial military and territorial expansion several decades before the attempted invasions of Japan in 1279 and 1281. The Mongols were a nomadic people that had used their mounted fighters to devastating affect against states that they were able to conquer. The Mongol conquests had begun in earnest under the seemingly all-conquering leadership of Genghis Khan. Under Genghis Khan’s leadership the Mongols gained a reputation for being fearsome fighters and built an impressive empire that covered and controlled most of modern day China and Russia. Perhaps most strategically significant of the Mongol conquests in terms of attacking Japan was the acquisition of Korea. Without controlling Korea it would have been harder for the Mongols and the Chinese to attempt an invasion of Japan. The expansion of Mongol power continued after the death of Genghis Khan. It was under the rule of Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan that the Mongol Empire reached its military and territorial zenith. Kublai Khan even became the first non-Chinese emperor of China when he founded the Yuan dynasty. Kublai Khan’s control of the Chinese meant that he was able to combine the military prowess of the Mongols with the human and financial resources plus the long established tradition of administrative efficiency within the Chinese Empire. Although he was not as gifted as a military leader as Genghis Khan was, Kublai Khan was intent upon the expansion of the Mongol Empire. Mongol policy under Kublai Khan was to either invade Japan directly or claim overlordship over Japan. The primary motivation for attempting to invade Japan was to expand the territory of the Mongol Empire and as a by-product of conquest it would increase its prestige even further.
To begin with Kublai Khan contented himself by demanding that the Japanese accepted Mongol overlordship and that they also paid him tribute to acknowledge his superior position over them. To the annoyance of the Mongols and the Chinese the Japanese did nothing to refute or accept Mongol claims, they simply ignored the Mongol claim of overlordship. Perhaps the Japanese government did not take the Mongol claims as a threat to their security and independence seriously, or the Japanese government may have hoped that Kublai Khan and his armies would be distracted by his campaigns to gain complete control of China. Whilst other events especially the campaign to subdue southern China may have put plans for the Mongols and the Chinese plans to invade Japan on hold, Kublai Khan and his advisors seemed to have viewed such a conquest as being a worthwhile long-tern political and military objective. Mongol military forces tended to become restless and potentially rebellious if there few or no military campaigns to become involved in. For Kublai Khan invading Japan had military, strategic, and political advantages. Japan was only a short distance away from the Mongol Empire and its main military forces based in China. Other possible targets for military campaigns were further away from the Mongols bases, with the possibility that they would be better defended than Japan was. For instance the Mongols could have met sterner resistance if attempting to advance further west than the Danube in central Europe. Campaigns in Europe also had the disadvantage of stretching Mongol supply lines to their furthest extent.
Under Kublai Khan’s directions the combined Mongol and Chinese forces landed and defeated local Japanese forces during November 1294 in the north - western Kyushu region of Japan. The Mongol and Chinese forces were substantial and if their commanders had not been overcautious they could have established an unbreakable foothold into Japan. Over 900 ships had ferried in excess of 40,000 men across the Japan Sea from Korea. The local Japanese forces engaged the Mongol and Chinese forces in a
skirmish before retreating. The Japanese were saved from immediate danger when the Mongols and the Chinese decided to return to their ships. Not for the last time the Japanese were saved by severe weather conditions. A violent storm sank at least 300 ships and meant that many thousands of men were drowned forcing the Mongol and the Chinese forces to return to China.The Mongols and the Chinese could have given up their intention to conquer Japan after the losses of 1274. The Mongols in general and Kublai Khan in particular were not known for their willingness to abandon their objectives after one failed attempt. Not with standing the possibilities that tropical storms or typhoons could devastate their invasion fleets, the Mongols and the Chinese carried on with plans to invade Japan. The Japanese provoked the Mongols and the Chinese further by having their messengers summarily executed when those messengers had brought peace offers and terms from Kublai Khan. Provocation from the Japanese certainly increased the desire of the Mongols and the Chinese to successfully invade Japan. The size of the invasion fleets and the armies that they transported across the Japan Sea in 1279 and especially in 1281 was ample demonstration of their intentions to invade Japan and make no mistakes in achieving victory. The Mongols and the Chinese did not expect the successful invasion of Japan to be completed without heavy losses, although they believed that their superiority in numbers, resources, and firepower would prove too much for the Japanese to defeat. Kublai Khan ordered the mobilization of thousands of men and the construction of thousands of ships to carry them to Japan and once landed to overcome all resistance. The invasion force of 1281 was huge by the standards of the day with over 140,000 men being landed in Japan by at least 4,400 ships. Such was the strength of Japanese resistance that not even this force was large enough to ensure victory.
After the failure of the 1274 invasion the Japanese were well aware of the Mongol and the Chinese intentions to launch further invasion attempts. Therefore the Japanese made preparations to resist the invasion attempts that seemed to be inevitable. The Japanese government organised the country’s defences as efficiently as it could, for instance by placing the areas in which the Mongols and the Chinese were the most likely to land on a high state of alert. The Japanese government believed that accurate information as to where the Mongols and the Chinese where was essential for successful resistance to the invaders. The Japanese had changed their military tactics as a result of the experience of fighting the Mongols and the Chinese in November 1274. The Japanese avoided fighting the Mongols and the Chinese in pitched battles as they assumed that they would be outnumbered and outfought. Instead the Japanese used the mountainous terrain of their country to its best affect when the Mongols and the Chinese successfully landed their large invasion force in 1281. Japanese resistance was brave, stubborn, and also highly effective. The Mongols and the Chinese were forced into bringing reinforcements in to finally achieve victory. The level of Japanese resistance was heroic and virtually suicidal at times. The strength of that resistance was destined to become the stuff of Japanese legends. However had not the forces of nature intervened again it is highly probable that Kublai Khan would have witnessed the successful conquest of Japan through the sheer force of numbers available to his Mongol and his Chinese forces. Those forces had not shown the same adaptability or strategic awareness as the Japanese defenders who held out for around two months against overwhelming odds.
It was not the heroics of the defenders that became the main stay of the Japanese legends and myths concerning the failure of the Mongols and the Chinese to conquer Japan in 1281. Instead pride of place goes to the typhoon that destroyed a great percentage of the invasion fleet and possibly killed half of the Mongol and Chinese invaders if not more. For the Japanese the divine wind or kamikaze brought them victory and reduced the possibilities of further Mongol led invasion attempts. Nature it seemed was rewarding the Japanese for their brave resistance against seemingly impossible odds.
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