The Samurai and the Mongol Invasion of 1274

While the samurai are remembered for strong ties to particular clans and masters they are also remembered as being extremely individualistic. Not until the first Mongol invasion of 1274 did the samurai put aside their differences and unite to face a common enemy. This was also the first occasion in the military history of the samurai that Japan was subjected to foreign invaders.

The man who united the samurai against the Mongol invaders was the Regent Hojo Tokimune. Tokimune, though only eighteen years old, convinced the samurai to set aside familial feuds and clan conflicts. He convinced them that the safety and security of Japan as a nation outweighed the rivalries and arguments of the individual clans which made up the nation as a whole. The defensive stance of a united samurai is often seen as the birth of Japanese nationalism.

This unity first appeared when Japan refused Kublai Khan, the ruler of the Mongols, and his ‘invitation’ to become his subjects in 1268. The Great Khan’s ambassadors delivered several more requests, demands, and threats prior to the first Mongol invasion. The Great Khan launched this invasion in 1274 from the shores of Korea. Korea, as a subjected nation, was required not only to provide a majority of the transports necessary for the invasion of Japan, but a contingent of troops as well.

In 1274, then, a Mongol invasion force of some 25,000 set sail from Korea in November for Japan. The invasion force, on its way to Hakata Bay on the Japanese coast, stopped at the islands of Iki and Tsushima. Both the Japanese defenders and the civilian populations were massacred by the overwhelming invaders, thus giving the Japanese a bitter sample of the Mongolian way of war. For the samurai, warfare was the domain of men, and women and children were not to be butchered.

On 19 November the invasion fleet arrived in Hakata Bay. With support from the offloading ships the invaders were put ashore at Imazu and launched an attack on Hakata on the morning of the 20th of November, 1274. During this attack the stark differences between the Mongolian and Samurai styles of warfare became apparent.

The two armies each approached combat with significant tactical differences. The Mongolian soldiers had been fighting wars against a variety of enemies for decades. Mongolian commanders also had firsthand knowledge in commanding troops in a combat situation. The Mongols would advance in a phalanx formation with the soldiers depending on their strength as a unit regardless of individual courage or the individual worth of their weapons.

The samurai, however, were extremely individualistic. Combat was a test of personal bravery where one’s skill in martial arts dictated a samurai’s standing among his peers. Each samurai sought the challenge of a powerful opponent whom he might defeat in single combat and thus take the enemy’s head as a prize and prove his own worth.

Thus it was that the samurai’s individual bravery literally smashed against the unified front of a Mongolian phalanx. And while the weapons of the Mongols were inferior in quality they did have round projectiles -- launched most likely from a variety of siege engines -- which exploded and sent shrapnel ripping through the ranks of the samurai.

By the end of the 20th the samurai were forced to retreat to fortifications which had been built centuries earlier. What followed next was a long for the samurai who awaited reinforcements to help fight an enemy they were not sure that they could beat.

When the morning arrived, however, the samurai found that the invaders had retreated to their ships, laying waste to the countryside as they went, including the firing of villages and shrines. Military historians such as S.R. Turnbull theorize that the Mongols withdrew for two reasons: one, the resistance the Mongols had experienced had been far more than expected; and two, the Mongol commanders knew that samurai reinforcements would have been called for and would have arrived shortly.

Retreating back towards Korea proved to be a horrific mistake, though, as a great storm rose up. Fierce rains extinguished the fires the Mongols had set and terrific winds churned up the Sea of Japan. Once the storm finished with the retreating invasion fleet only 2,000 of the original 25,000 invaders lived to reach Korean shores.

While the Mongols would invade once more in 1281 the success of the samurai in 1274 gave the nation of Japan confidence in its abilities to defend itself. The samurai had managed to successfully cast aside personal disputes and feudal obligations to save the nation. When the Mongols invaded the Japanese again they would once more meet a unified corps of samurai determined to defend Japan.