Kublai Khan's Invasions of Japan: Hakata Bay Walls and the 1281 Typhoon

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From 1266 Kublai Khan sent six missions demanding that Japan submit, addressing its ruler as the king of a small state. The Kamakura shogunate, run by the Hojo regents, left the envoys waiting in a rundown inn and sent them home without an answer. In late 1274 roughly 15,000 Mongol, Han Chinese, and Jurchen troops sailed from Korea with Korean crews. On Tsushima, deputy governor So Sukekuni rode out with 80 mounted samurai and was wiped out; on Iki the governor sent his daughter to warn the mainland before dying with his family. At Hakata Bay, a samurai's whistling arrow invitation to single combat met laughter, drum-signaled formations, and exploding gunpowder bombs that panicked Japanese horses.

The invaders withdrew to their ships that night, and a storm wrecked much of the fleet; over 13,000 men did not return. Regent Hojo Tokimune then beheaded five envoys in 1275 and five more in 1279, and Japan built a two-meter stone wall along Hakata Bay. In 1281 Kublai sent two fleets, traditionally 140,000 men. The wall stopped the early arrivals, Japanese raiders struck by night in small boats, and the Mongols chained their ships into a floating fortress. On August 15, 1281, a typhoon smashed the chained fleet. Victory bankrupted the shogunate, spurred the katana's hard and soft steel design, and gave Japan the legend of the kamikaze, the divine wind.

• Invaders on Iki pierced captured women's hands and tied them to the sides of their ships as a terror tactic.
• A Mongol commander had been shot in the face, and fear of night ambushes drove the 1274 withdrawal to the ships.
• Kawano Michiari raided with two small boats, lost his uncle to an arrow, and boarded a Mongol ship despite wounds.
• Estimates put the 1281 losses at 60 to 90 percent of the invasion force; captured southern Chinese troops were spared but enslaved.
• With no conquered land to give out as rewards, impoverished samurai turned resentful and some became wokou pirates.