Sorry, writing this on my phone at the airport, so might be a bit incoherent. Basically I’m was watching unearth g ancient secrets on the science chan el and ther are talking about the invasion and how much it took to get their forces there. Thet had to build a massive fleet, create the logistic to support the invasion, supplies for hundreds of thousands of me and horses, and training since the Mongols were horsemen not seamen.
The show is interesting about trying to figure out where the fleet went down and what happened to it. Another question is the timing…surly they knew they were getting into the typhoon season.
My question, however is more basic…why invade Japan at all? Thrpere were still plenty of unconquered nations out there…India for one, but there were others they could have focused all these resources on. What made Japan the primary target for such commitment of forces? Couldn’t have been natural wealth or resources since Japan really did t have much going for it to invite such an invasion.
I don’t know if there’s a good answer here; our records mostly record events, not reasons for them. However, the Mongols were on a pretty good roll moving eastward, and may have regarded Japan as the logical next step. It’s never a good idea to leave an armed enemy at your back; conquering Japan might have had an attraction for that reason. If nothing else, it’s damned expensive to keep an army in the field and the only good way to mitigate that expense is to actually conquer something. Japan was right frickin’ there and easily might have fallen had the Mongol troops actually landed, so why not?
Actually, it wasn’t typhoon season. Typhoons are usually a summer phenom and the invasion occurred in November, IIRC. And they never hit the bay the invasion was targeting, either.
India was on the other side of Mt. Everest & the rest of the Himalayas, across the high Tibetan plateau. It was probably easier to just keep going east toward Japan.
And building a fleet and training seamen was probably not necessary – there were plenty of fishing boats & fisherman along the coast of China that could be put to use. (The Mongols were pretty experienced at forcing conquered peoples to work for them,.)
India was on the other side of Mt. Everest & the rest of the Himalayas, across the high Tibetan plateau. It was probably easier to just keep going east toward Japan.
And building a fleet and training seamen was probably not necessary – there were plenty of fishing boats & fisherman along the coast of China that could be put to use. (The Mongols were pretty experienced at forcing conquered peoples to work for them,.)
After the Mongols invaded China and Korea, Japan was the next closest country. If you were a 13th century Mongol, that was pretty much all the reason you needed to invade.
the way history ch (or was it greatest weapons?) explained it, it was a typical explore-raid-come-back with-the-whole-gang.
a raiding party of a few hundred archers and swordsmen on foot. hardly any organized resistance. they burned a few institutional structures. seven years later they came back with a real invasion force (around 60,000.) they pummelled all samurai that tried to take them head-on with showers of arrows. but when they tried to advance with spears, they didn’t achieve the decisive victory they expected. then japanese tried to board and raid their ships at anchor (a better application of the expensive-but-generally-useless-battle-weapon-the-katana.)
A combination of proximity and prestige. Japan has been somewhat separated from Chinese influence since the 9th century, initially triggered a period of Chinese persecution of Buddhism. Khubilai sought to reverse that quasi-isolationism Admiral Perry-style. Reviving the old imperial Chinese pretensions to a theoretical suzerainty over Japan ( a fiction of course ) by gaining a direct submission would pay internal dividends in dynastic prestige.
So multiple diplomatic missions in the 1260’s and 1270’s were sent via Korea to demand formal submission, as with Korea ( which remained under a native king, but as a de facto Mongol vassal ). But for various reasons those embassies were put off and even attempts at conciliation by the alarmed Japanese court were vetoed by the Shogun ( the real authority ), who felt they could be safely ignored. Khubilai was not a guy who enjoyed being ignored.
Hence the assaults, which were heavily mediated by Korean seapower.
But they did build a fleet. The invasion force was the largest single fleet in history other than the D-Day invasion force in 1944.
To carry the effort out, an enormous shipbuilding effort was initiated, mostly by forcing Chinese shipbuilders to work for them. A History Channel program indicated that some of these vessels have now been found, and analysts believe they were hastily made from green wood…not exactly sabotaged, but not made well, which may have had a lot to do with why so many of them were destroyed in the typhoon.
I remember reading a (highly fictional) book about it when I was in college (I think it was Shrike…something like that) which really brought the battle to life. It would be an interesting movie, or maybe they will do a Shogun II campaign about it.
I just saw the same “Ancient Mysteries” show on the History Channel last night and
The sailed before Typhoon season (not November) but after an initial landing was repulsed the Mongols were stuck on their ships for quite a while (due to illness?) and were there until Typhoon season
Besides the construction problems, the only way to make up the large numbers of vessels needed was to include a large number of conscripted river boats. Lacking a true keel these would not have been able to ride out a typhoon and were sunk.
They did a Mongol expansion pack for the first Shogun: Total War, so I wouldn’t doubt it.
And by the way I should correct myself - the real ruling power in Japan at the time were the Hojo regents for the Kamakura Shoguns. Japan had a rather elaborate network of leadership at that time with a usually under-aged sitting emperor under the thumb of a cloistered “retired” emperor, both loosely under the thumb of a shogun ( military dicatator ), who was under the thumb of a shikken ( regent ).
Both Korean and Chinese. In the second invasion ( the big one ) there were two fleets, one largely Korean and a second, larger fleet built at Sung ports ( the Southern Sung, a very significant naval power, having finally succumbed to the Mongols in 1279 ). The Korean fleet, whose commanders knew the waters better, made their getaway with the loss of maybe a third of their forces. The larger Chinese fleet however seems to have been been more exposed in the Gulf of Imari and the bulk of that fleet seems to have floundered.
Also it appears that the great majority of the invasion army was composed of Koreans and Chinese ( especially recently absorbed Sung soldiers from the south ), with a relatively small proportion of actual Mongol troops.
I’ve long had a pet theory that experience with the Mongols went some way toward shaping or at least reinforcing the later national characters of China and Japan. China has always had an attitude of “our Empire is protected by its superior culture, assimilating our would-be conquerors and making them part of ourselves*–just look at what happened to the Mongols.” On the other hand, Japan (as far as I can make out) has had a bit of an attitude of “our superior race is protected by the gods–just look at what happened to the Mongols.”