The History of China - #178 - Yuan 3: Divine Wind

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

The armies of Great Yuan sweep across the east, destroying and conquering all who would stand against them. Goryeo Korea eventually sees the writing on the wall and cuts a deal with the Great Khan. Khubilai will then turn his sights out over the waters of the Pacific, to the Land of the Rising Sun... and send its monarch a friend request. Time Period Covered: ca. 1257-1275 CE Major Historical Figures: Yuan Dynasty: Khubilai, Great Khan of Mongolia, Emperor of Yuan Princess Hutulun Jielimishi Zhao Liangbi, Yuan Emissary to Japan Goryeo Korea: Choi Ui, Warlord of Korea [d. 1257] King Wonjong [r. 1260-1274] Im Yon, Warlord [d. ca. 1271] Pan Pu, Yuan Emissary to Japan Kamakura Japan: Hojo Tokimune, Regent of the Shogun (Shikken, de facto ruler of Japan) Shoni Sukeyoshi, Magistrate of Chikuzen City Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous Reign of terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 178, Divine Wind.

Last time, we left Kublai as the newly victorious Great Khan, and as the only one of his brothers to survive the Toluid Civil War between himself and Arik Bok. He was thereafter gearing up to face down the Southern Song, a process that would take, in total, nearly two more decades to complete. The fact of the matter, though, is that we've already largely covered that particular warfront, at least from the Song perspective. Meanwhile, though the reduction of Chinese resistance was certainly the largest and most daunting challenge to Kublai's empire, it was by no means the only thing on the Great Khan's plate. So today, instead of just doing a role-flipped repeat of the conquest of Southern Song, we're going to let that play in the background for the most part.

That is to say, simply understanding that it is continuing to take place, while we devote more of our effort to the other tasks at hand with the soon-to-be-named Yuan Dynasty. And today, that will be primarily concerned with the other campaigns on the Eastern Front. Some quite successful, others markedly less so. We turn first, then, to the little peninsular kingdom that had long frustrated not only the Mongols, but in centuries past, often even Chinese designs against it, Korea. The peninsula had been ruled by the Goryeo dynasty, since it had successfully unified the three warring states by the mid-10th century.

It had proven itself time and again to be a curiously difficult nut to crack, so much so that the Song, Liao, and Jin had one and all pretty much decided to just let it be and allowed its royal family to use their own imperial titles and claims. Now, I'm not a Korean historian, so this is going to be a really quick bare-bones overview here, but in 1170, a rebellion had broken out in the military caste of Goryeo against the rule of the Confucian-style civil governor-officials. One of the leaders to rise to prominence in this rebellion was a guy named Yi Wibang, who, along with his co-conspirators and eventual fellow warlords, Zhongzhengbu and You, plotted to enact a coup d'etat against the throne. It was swiftly discovered that the calligraphy brush was not, in fact, mightier than the sword, and in short order, the rebel warriors had overthrown the old king, Weizhong, and set up a new puppet king, Myongjang,

while they took over as the new military dictatorship that would last for a century. So flash forward about 26 years, and four, count them, four, overthrown and killed military dictators later. And in 1196, another upstart named Choi Chong-hun, wait for it, overthrew and killed the last guy, and then set up his own military dictatorship. His big difference was that he would, surprise, not be assassinated by a rival, but instead die of old age in 1219 after passing the reins of power onto his own son, Choy Yu, thus establishing a kind of shogun-esque dynastic military dictatorship rather than just a promotion via assassination.

Well, it was around this time that Goryeo had blipped onto the radar of a certain Genghis Khan, but when the Mongols attacked, Choy Yu was able to preserve his government by hiding the king and royal family on Ganghwa Island, which is just off the coast in the East Sea, west of Seoul proper, and north of where Incheon International Airport is today. Such it was that neither Genghis in 1218, nor his son Ogedei later on in 1231, had found the kind of total success against the kingdom that they had surely expected. Though the overwhelming might of Mongol military supremacy had been able to effect de facto sovereignty over much of the peninsula, the king's and his puppet master Choi overlord's frustrating refusal to be captured really gummed up the works. Given the whole repeated stretches of internal kerfuffles and external pressures, Korea got put onto a backburner for a while,

still on the Mongol to-do list, but at a pretty low priority. Until, in 1253, Mongkokon ordered his general, Chala Artai, to bring the stubborn Korean court to its knees at last. This initial assault would be followed up again in 1258, while Korea was afflicted by a terrible drought, overwhelming the local defenders and inflicting great suffering on the population. Even so, those populations who submitted themselves fast enough were often spared the sword's edge, and the Mongols were quick to recruit from their

ranks the usual skilled artisans, learned men, and other useful people for themselves. Probably the greatest boon for the Mongol conquerors was that the Choi family had become rather horribly oppressive in their own right in the course of their governance over the kingdom, and had engendered the widespread hatred of the Korean people. Feeling a change in the wind, a rebellion against the Choys broke out and killed Choi Wee in 1257, ending the family's domination of the kingdom once and for all. The Mongol armies did not attempt to cross the waters at Ganghua Island, perhaps giving their later misadventures in trans-oceanic conquest a prescient decision,

which it turned out they wouldn't even have to do. With Choyi's death, the royal family decided that accommodation with the Mongols was in order, and therefore agreed to send their crowned Prince Chon to the Great Khan as a hostage for their pledge of fealty and subservience to the Khanate. Prince Chon would travel to northern China and be swiftly taken under the wing of Kublai himself, who took a deep liking to the man. Within only a few months, both Mongke Khan and the old king of Goryeo would die, leaving a power vacuum that both princes, Mongol and Korean alike, might exploit to their benefit if they moved quickly enough.

Kublai, though often cautious in his dealings, decided to roll the dice on his newfound friend in Prince Chong. Trusting in the loyalty and virtuous nature that he saw in Chong, Kublai released the prince from his captivity with him and instructed him to go back and claim the throne of Goryeo for himself. He wouldn't do this alone, of course, but would have what backing Kublai could muster. A pittance, really, given that the Il-Khan would soon require his full strength to battle his own brother in the far north. Kublai would likewise be sending along with Prince Chun, a Mongol commissioner, to oversee the new King of Korea and ensure that his decisions remained beneficial to the larger empire. Kublai's trust in Prince Chun, who would succeed in his quest to claim the throne and

become King Wonjong in 1260, proved well-founded. Relations between the Khanate and the kingdom grew steadily better over the decade to follow, and the new king, following Kublai's advice, even sent his own son and heir to the Mongol court in his place. Rossaby writes, The Korean king sent periodic tribute embassies to Kublai's court distress, Kublai came to the Koreans' rescue with supplies of grain and meat. He also reportedly instructed his troops along the border not to harass, rob, or plunder the Koreans. Similarly, he admonished his Jurchen subjects in Manchuria to refrain from any attacks across the border into Korea. The resulting relations between Wanzhong and Kublai were amicable, and in fact so close that the Mongol emperor sent medicines to the ailing Korean king in 1266. It wasn't at all out of character, therefore, when upon hearing

that King Wanzhong was facing an internal revolt against his rule, led by another would-be military dictator called Imyeon, Kublai acted fast. By the time word had reached the Khan, Wanzhong had been overthrown, and his own younger brother placed as Imyeon's puppet on the throne. Even so, Kublai dispatched a full 3,000 troops under the command of the crown prince of Goryeo. By the spring of the following year, the wannabe warlord Imyeon had been routed off the mainland entirely, retreating to the southern island of Cheju, where he would hold out until 1273. Wonjong, meanwhile, was restored to the throne, and his relationship with the great Khan now well and truly cemented. In order to formally seal the deal, Kublai turned to a time-tested strategy, the marriage alliance. He sent his own daughter, known as Khutul-Jelamishi, to be betrothed to the crown prince.

Their union would prove fruitful, and the eventual successor to the throne of Goryeo would indeed share the blood of Genghis and Kublai. The relationship between Korea and the wider Mongol Empire would, at least economically, prove to be a largely beneficial one for both sides. The Koreans, as formerly vassalized subjects of the Khanate, were expected to contribute what amounted to their fair share of revenue, soldiers, and trade goods. Though the Peninsular Kingdom certainly couldn't provide any tremendous amount of material on the scale of, say, Northern China or the other Khanates within the empire, it did have a host of specialty products that greatly interested those among the elite who could afford them. Marmot and otter

skins were greatly prized, as well as Korean-produced silver, textiles, and even paper goods. The local falcons were likewise prized by the Mongol nobility for their frequent hunts, which was a particular favorite pastime of Kublai himself. Above all else, though, were the delicate, intricate, and exceedingly beautiful celadon ceramic wares of the region. Korean pottery was known far and wide as outclassing even the best the Chinese could produce in the era, and was prized across the known world. Though typically the pale blue-green that gives the ceramic its name, the Korean artisans had worked out a way of using copper oxide before baking the pieces into their kilns to give the final product a dazzling red as well. Rossaby writes of a curious anecdote that tells of even

Kublai being taken aback at the elaborateness and excessive cost of the Korean claywares. He writes, quote, a Korean envoy named Cho offered Kublai a beautiful vase, and the great Khan's response was, painting gold on porcelain, Is that to make the porcelain strong? Cho's answer was, No, it is only to decorate the vase. The Khan then asked, Can the gold be used again? Cho replied,

Porcelain breaks so easily, so also naturally gold. How can it be used again? Kublai Khan then said, From now on, do not use gold and do not present it to me. End quote. Now, for those of us who might hear that exchange and have it clashed dramatically with the visions of unrestrained wealth and opulence and the recollections of Marco Polo or the opium-addled dreams of Coleridge, Rossaby has us bear in mind that this was Kublai in his early years, when he devoted himself seriously to the goals of the state, undiverted by the luxuries available at the Chinese court.

Time and power would, as they ever do, change the man irrevocably. Evidence of that inevitable shift towards luxury and indolence would come beginning in 1267, when Kublai began including orders of a particular type of fish skin to be included in the tribute missions to his capital. This was not for eating, but rather so that his artisans could fashion a special type of shoe for him, which he had come to understand could cure him of the terrible, painful swelling of the joints in his feet. This would prove to be the beginnings of gout that would plague the Great Khan for the rest of his life. Thus, only the best-made shoes from the most luxurious materials could suffice, and for Kublai, that meant imported Korean fish skin. In addition to the specialty and luxury items imported from Korea, the kingdom was also expected to adhere to the usual standards

and expectations meted out to a dependent state of the Mongol Empire. Population registers were demanded as an initial step towards laying out a comprehensive taxation system, new postal stations and service roads ordered constructed, as well as the requirement that any Mongol troops stationed in Korea would need to be provisioned and cared for by the populace themselves. They were further required to supply the imperial court with girls to serve as concubines and servants, and members of the imperial family would be kept in the Khan's palace as compulsory guests to ensure the continued loyalty up until 1283. Though the Goryeo kings did retain some modicum of internal authority, they were compelled to accept Mongol-appointed legal commissioners amongst their court, and thereafter secure the

approval from them for any major decision. Probably the greatest and most burdensome requirement set at the feet of the Korean kingdom by its new Mongol overlord was that its men of soldiering age would now be used as the spear tip by which Kublai Khan meant to expand his empire So a couple of things here. First off, I sure hope by now that you know what is meant when the euphemism of establishing diplomatic relations is thrown about in relationship to the Mongols. If not, feel free to pause, go back, and re-listen to all the Mongol episodes once again, and I'll wait for you here. But as a one-sentence refresher, it's, hello, nice to meet you, now do as we say, when we say it, exactly how we say it, or we'll kill you all. In the 13th century, Japan had largely isolated itself from the affairs of the mainland, going on for centuries at this point. This had been brought about in large part thanks to the

propensity of the late Tang Dynasty court to periodically persecute Buddhism, which was like totally not at all Zen for the very Buddhist Japanese. This, combined with the Japanese emperors deciding that art and poetry was way more cool and interesting than governing, and deciding to begin appointing a series of barbarians subduing great generals, or seitai shogun, or just shoguns for short, to run things in their stead, meant that Japan would eventually be very much tied up in a drawn-out series of civil conflicts involving a whole lot of warlords with even more samurai, all very much insisting that they were the ones truly fighting on behalf of the emperor, and everyone else was a rebel pretender. Anyways, you should go check out

Isaac Meyer's History of Japan podcast for lots more detail on that. For our purposes here today, what that meant was that Kublai figured that if he proved himself capable of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the land of the rising sun as a tributary state of his great empire, then he would prove himself both a great conqueror in the eyes of his Mongol brethren and simultaneously establish himself as a great Chinese ruler on their own terms. As a quick note here, Kublai was a careful student of Chinese history and had chosen for himself a past ruler on whom he wished to model his own reign and dynasty. Who else but that last great ruler of the Middle Kingdom, the Übermensch himself, Tang Taizong. It would be a tremendous victory that no other Mongol leader could hope to duplicate. The Khan that sailed across the sea

and conquered the edge of the world. And so what if no Mongol had ever substantively engaged in sea-based amphibious operations? I mean, how hard could it be? We'll just get the Koreans to give us a few lessons and we'll be good to go. It'll be fine. For their part, the Koreans were no great friends of the Japanese. Since at least the early 1220s, the peninsula had been under near-continuous assault by Japanese pirates and coastal raiders that patrolled up and down the coasts of the eastern sea looking for easy plunder, no matter what banner it might be sailing under. Korean, Song Chinese, Mongol, I mean, whatever. These pirates had long been known by the derisive name Wokou, or Weigu in Korean or Wakou in Japanese. Wokou both referred to the supposed origin of the Japanese people themselves, as well as referencing dwarfism in a pejorative

sense, and Kou meant bandits. So, the Japanese bandit dwarves, wokou. As with many such freebooters across time, the wokou pirate bands typically hid themselves in the innumerable coves and hideaways that dotted the thousands of tiny islets and archipelagos all the way from Hokkaido to Hainan. They had no official backing by either the Japanese emperor nor the shogunate government. Moreover, even though they were commonly thought of as being Japanese pirates, they were, again in extremely common fashion, typically a far more pell-mell mixture of just about every ethnicity, race, class, and type of person that might exist along the Pacific Rim. Any sailor or ship was little more than one lost shipment or untimely pirate attack themselves away from being forced by circumstance or sword point

into signing on to the pirate's life and being branded an outlaw. Indeed, it was relatively common practice among the various royal courts of the dynasties to occasionally, like upon the accession of a new ruler or other such momentous event, issue a general pardon as an act of grace to such outcasts and allow them a path back to return to normal society, provided of course that they force war ever returning to a criminal lifestyle. Thus, though the Korean kingdom was regularly harassed by pirate vessels, especially as its defensive forces were increasingly distracted by the Mongol threat to the northwest, its own court understood the independent nature of piracy well enough to know that it wasn't Japan itself sending these raiders against it, and did not

declare war on the island kingdom. It would occasionally send emissaries to lodge strongly worded protests against the raids with the Japanese government, but otherwise simply understood that there was little either side could really do about the problem. Moreover, once Korea had been subdued by the Mongols and its coastal defenders were able to renew their vigil against such piracy with their former vigor, the raids largely ceased by the mid-1260s. As such, neither the Korean populace nor its royal court had significant interest in engaging in direct hostilities with Japan. Kublai, however, had other ideas. In the autumn of 1266, the Mongol Great Khan had dispatched an embassy of his own to sail for Japan

in order to inform the distant kingdom that China was under new management, and to invite the Japanese emperor to be a good little vassal state and send a mission of its own to Shangdu in order to offer up tribute to Emperor Kublai. Two envoys were dispatched, first to the Korean capital, then called Kangdo, and about three months later proceeded onward towards Japan in the company of two local guides. Yet by the time they had arrived at the send-off point to the true oceanic segment of their journey, a small island called Kojedo, the two Mongol envoys had apparently been convinced by their less-than-eager Korean guides that oceanic travel to Japan was definitely not for them, and that the seas were far too rough and dangerous to make such a voyage. As such, the mission turned around incomplete, and the two Mongol envoys hastened back to China. The mission would at last be

completed later that year, in 1267, when, following a stinging rebuke from the Khan himself for interfering with the completion of his servants' missions, a letter was this time entrusted to a more willing Korean official with better sea legs named Pan Pu. Pan arrived at Hakata in the first month of 1268 and presented the letter to the city magistrate of Chikuzen, a man named Shoni Sukiyoshi, along with accompanying letters from the king of Korea as well as one of his own. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile, these people created one of the most enduring and significant cultures. Their tale comes to life in the History of Egypt podcast.

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The text of the letter, written in classical Chinese, which was the official written language of both Japan and Korea, as well as China at this point, is as follows. Quote, Favored by the decree of highest heaven, the emperor of the great Mongol nation sends this letter to the king of Japan. is as follows. apply in this case, since our ancestors received a clear mandate from heaven and control all of China, and those from distant places and other regions who fear our awesomeness and embrace our virtue have been countless. When we first ascended the throne, as the innocent people of Korea had long suffered from spearheads and arrowheads, we immediately disbanded the soldiers and returned their frontier fortresses and sent them their old and young back to their homes. The Korean sovereign and subjects came to our court to express their thanks.

Although in righteousness we were sovereign and subject, we are as happy as father and son. We believe that you and your subjects already know this. Korea is our eastern frontier. Japan is close to Korea. From the founding of your country, you have also occasionally had contact with China, but to us, you have not sent even an envoy with a single cart to communicate friendly intentions. Fearing that your kingdom knows this, but has not considered it carefully, we have specially dispatched an envoy with a letter to proclaim our intention. We hope hereafter, we will exchange greetings and establish friendly relations in order to have mutual affection and friendship. The sage treats all within the four seas as family. Could it be the principle

of a family not to mutually exchange friendly greetings? As for using soldiers and weapons, who would want that? King, consider this. This does not fully express our meaning. End quote. Now, there are a couple ways to read this letter. The first is the simple surface reading of, hello, we'd like friendly relations, please come say hi. And if you believe that, I've got some beachfront property in Tibet that I'd like to sell you at a really good price. Given everything that we know about the Mongols and their other letters and conversations with other foreign leaders, it's patently obvious that this reads much more like a mafioso extortion letter. It's a real nice island you got there. Yeah, real nice.

Sure would be a shame if something, uh, bad were to happen to it. Tell you what, cough up a little protection tribute and, uh, we'll make sure no one goes smashing up the place, you hear me? We today, of course, know the whole of the subtext in retrospect, but the Japanese court did not. Though they certainly knew of the Mongols and at least some of their exploits across East Asia, the whole scope and scale of their enterprise would have been largely rumor and speculation to the very secretive court. The Japanese court was therefore apparently rather divided about how

to take this missive, as an invitation to friendly relations or a submit-or-die notification. Debate raged on for more than a month after the letter's receipt, but finally the more sober heads, those who understood a veiled threat when they saw it, namely the shogun and his military officials, prevailed. The ultimate decision-maker of the government, the shogun's regent, Hojo Tokimune, was particularly insulted that Kublai had referred to Japan as a small kingdom. The response to the message would be no response at all to Shangdu. Let the Khan think that the letter had got lost in the mail or something.

Maybe he'd forget all about us. In the meantime, orders went out across the country for prayers to be recited across Japan for divine protection, while the Shogun took all steps he could to shore up and reinforce the coastal defenses against a possible invasion. Again from Rasabi, "...counting on the strength of the samurai warrior class, and on the insularity and what he perceived to be the inaccessibility of the Japanese islands, he and his predecessor as regent, Hojo Masamura, had rebuffed the overtures of the Mongol emissary. After some preliminary discussions of the appropriate response, the shogunate simply sent the Mongol emissary. After some preliminary discussions of the appropriate response,

the shogunate simply sent the Mongol away without any message from the Japanese government. Though the court drafted a conciliatory letter and sent a copy for approval to the shogunate, the shogun's regent vetoed the dispatch of this missive." Time passed, and Kublai busied himself with his ongoing campaigns against the reeling Southern Song regime. He had a fleet of more than 300 river-bound warships constructed and sailed down the Han River and into the Yangtze, and laid siege to the fortress city of Xiangyang, yet still no reply from Japan was forthcoming. It was perplexing. It was annoying. Thus, as the Mongol armies continued to ring off Xiangyang's citadel and wait its defenders out in 1271, the Great Khan had another copy of his earlier message drafted and sent again to Japan.

Maybe they simply hadn't received the first one. This time, the ambassador's Korean escorts were able to secretly alert the Japanese of the scale of the threat posed by these Mongols, who once again refused to allow the ambassador access to the Japanese royal court to deliver his message in person. This time, on the return voyage, the embassy came across a pair of Japanese fishermen and ordered them captured and brought along with them. The two fishermen were brought all the way back to Chengdu, and then showered in luxury and caretakers, and were at last granted an audience with Kublai himself. Once he felt that they'd been suitably awestruck by the splendor of his court, he ordered that the fishermen be returned to Japan, and that they deliver a message to their ruler that he needed to show the proper respect to the Emperor of China and Great Khan of the Mongols, and stop ignoring my friend request already. This, however, once

again elicited no response from the island kingdom. Well, this was starting to get well and truly irksome. The insolence of the Japanese, to not so much as deign to reply to Kublai's repeated missives, was more than just a mere annoyance. Rather, it was both meant to be, and understood as, a pointed insult to the Khan's pretenses of universal sovereignty. He could not allow them to defy him indefinitely. In neither of his two roles, as Khan of Khans of the Mongols, or as Emperor of China, could Kublai afford to be humiliated by a foreign state. Mongol custom demanded the proper reception of envoys, and Chinese custom required the acceptance of the Emperor as the supreme ruler of all lands. Such clear-cut mandates meant that Kublai could

not continue to tolerate the slights endured by his envoys in Japan. Even so, he would try once again to elicit the sort of response that his station demanded, and would send yet another mission, this time under the official banner of the newly so-named Great Yuan Dynasty in the spring of 1272. The embassy would be headed this time by Zhao Liangbi, who would make his landing at Imazu, on the east coast of Kyushu Island in October of that year. Zhao would only be the latest of the Mongol ambassadors, however, to experience the chilly Japanese reception. When his request to address the royal court directly was curtly denied, he thereafter issued an ultimatum that he'd been so charged with, that the Japanese court had but two months to respond to Kublai's repeated messages,

or the Great Yuan would consider the shogunate's repeated brusqueness to be, in effect, the equivalent of a vassal state declaring itself in rebellion against him. Though the imperial court was itself willing once again to offer up a bland and nebulously placating response, the shogunate would have none of it. Instead, the military dictatorship expelled the Yuan embassy altogether without any official reply. Zhao made his way back to China and detailed in his report the treatment he'd received in Japan, as well, most likely, as to the state of its defenses as he and his agents had been able to observe. The insulting nature of the shogun's reception and then expulsion of his own ambassador

was what most aroused the Great Khan's ire. Thrice now he had attempted to reach his hand out in peace and friendship, and thrice now it had been slapped down in disdain. Further delay in bringing his wayward vassal to heel would only increase its brazenness against him, and perhaps inspire others to the idea that Kublai was not a master to be feared and obeyed. As it so happened, the drawn-out siege of Xiangyang was at long last drawing to a successful close. In only a few months' time, its sister city had been razed and its population put to the sword, and the great garrison itself surrendered without further struggle. Thus Kublai felt he could now safely divert a small piece of his great military force to pacify the rogue Japanese islands once

and for all. He was able to further justify this endeavor with the rationale that once Japan had been successfully pacified, it would no longer engage in trade with the Southern Song, which would serve to further weaken the great enemy. The Khan had not, of course, been sitting idle and assuming that diplomacy would carry the day when it came to Japan. To say that his overtures for a peaceful tributary relationship was nothing more than a fig leaf to hide his more sanguinary objective might be somewhat overstating the case. But even so, Kublai was certainly worldly and experienced enough to know that, when it came to interstate relationships as the Mongols viewed and understood them, it more often than not required an extensive application of the stick over the carrot to properly motivate the small kingdoms who thought themselves beyond his reach.

For years now, he'd ordered that his Korean subjects construct a fleet of transport ships that could ferry his army across the narrow gap of sea between their peninsula and Japan. By 1274, the armada numbered some 300 large ships and four to five hundred smaller vessels, onto which were loaded an amphibious expeditionary unit of some 15,000 Mongol, Chinese, and Jurchen soldiers, as well as 6,000 to 8,000 Korean troops, who Rossaby notes were mostly disgruntled at having been roped into this operation. The ships would be operated and guided by an additional 7,000 Korean sailors. Thus, in November of 1274, did this force of perhaps 30,000 depart from the port at Hapo, near modern Busan, South Korea. Their first stops were

the two offshore outposts of Tsushima and Iki Islands, which were easily overrun by the mainland force. These initial stepstones secured the main invasion force made directly for the nearest Japanese home island, Kyushu. So, pressing pause for a moment, if given everything else we've discussed so far, both in terms of this one episode and the overall Mongol operations, an invasion force of 30,000 seems a bit small, congratulations, you get a gold star. Kublai, for some reason, seemed to have massively underestimated the scale of resistance that would be facing his army down once it arrived in Japan. That said, it wasn't as though he was really facing anything even close to a united front when

it came to the Japanese resistance. Japan, in spite of there being an emperor and a shogun, remained very feudal and fractious, with the contingents of its professional warrior nobility, the samurai, sworn to their own personal lords rather than a common defense of the nation overall. Moreover, Kyushu was a less than ideal point from which to conduct their defensive operations. Fortifications there were rudimentary, and the island's infrastructure was underdeveloped to the point where it could not sustain a sizable army for any notable period of time. Though accomplished archers in their own right, the Japanese were technologically far behind their Yuan contemporaries, whose projectiles could easily outrange their own bows, and their crossbows could pummel them with unheard-of rates of fire.

The Japanese commanders were likewise relatively inexperienced compared to their Mongol contemporaries, especially when it came to large-scale battles and logistics. Even at the individual unit level, the fighting styles between the two forces favored the Yuan invaders. Whereas the Japanese were highly proficient in hand-to-hand combat, theirs was often contingent on the feudal Bushido concept of individual combat prowess and honorable combat. The combined Sino-Mongolian force, on the other hand, actively discouraged, and even outright punished, such displays of singular heroism, and instead emphasized mass formations and maneuvers, tactics that proved utterly alien and overwhelming to the Japanese defenders.

Rossaby writes, Therefore, when the Mongol forces landed on the east coast of Kyushu at Hakata on November 19th, the Japanese were at a decided disadvantage. The Mongols' battle stance and their plan of attack baffled the Japanese, as did the drums and bells that preceded a Mongol advance. By the end of the first night, the Japanese forces had suffered serious losses of manpower and equipment. The remaining troops were in a weak position, a rout appeared to be in the making, and that night only the cover of darkness saved them.

It would take a miracle to fend off this incursion into Kyushu, seemingly no less than a literal act of God. And, as luck would have it, a literal act of God just so happened to be on offer that very night. From seemingly out of nowhere, a gale force wind and hurricane rains began to assail the assault force as darkness fell. The Korean sailors were soon begging their Mongol commanders to reconsider their landing, telling them that their ships had no chance of survival if they remained so close to shore, that they would be buffeted about like twigs and dashed against the coastal rocks, sealing off the Mongol army's only means of retreat.

Instead, they insisted, the army should re-board the ships, and they would make out for the open sea to ride out the storm in relative, if highly uncomfortable, safety. It took no small amount of convincing, but the Mongol commanders at last agreed to temporarily call off their landing operations and pull their forces back to the armada. It would prove a fateful decision. Though the Japanese defenders attempted to capitalize on the Mongol withdrawal, attacking the retreating invaders with some success,

in the end it would be no force of arms that would seal the doom of the invasion force that night, but the force of the sea itself. As the fleet, now burdened down once again with its tens of thousands of soldiers, attempted to sail out of the Kyushu coastline towards the open water, the wind and waves of the unseasonable typhoon winds buffeted and crashed hundreds of the vessels against the rocks and cliffsides. By some accounts, by dawn of the following morning, more than 13,000 of the initial 30,000-strong force had disappeared beneath the black waves. With near half of their entire force drowned without so much as having established a foothold on Kyushu, the Mongol commanders had no choice but to call off the invasion altogether, a rare unmitigated disaster for the young Yuan dynasty's plans of foreign conquest. For the Japanese themselves, of course, it would be remembered as precisely the opposite, no less than a boon from nature itself in defense of holy Japan.

A divine wind, a kamikaze, called down to blow away any and all who would threaten the land of the rising sun. For Kublai, this failure was, of course, an annoyance. A costly, embarrassing, and perhaps even portentous, if whispers were to be believed, annoyance. But whispers were no more than whispers, and tongues that waggled too fiercely could well find themselves cut out. Kublai had far greater concerns than some freak storm that drowned a minor contingent of his Chinese and Korean subjects. It was 1275, and Southern Song buckled under the weight of the Mongol assault. Already, the counter-strike led by the pathetic Jia Sidao,

supposedly consisting of more than 130,000 soldiers, had crumbled to dust after being hit in the flanks. Suzhou had fallen, and a total solar eclipse that March portended the end of one era and the dawn of a new one, a glorious era, a Mongol era. Ensconced in Shangdu, Kublai continued to hold court, with a sum total of the world's best, brightest, and most ambitious literally crossing oceans, mountains, and wastelands to submit themselves before his throne. Heck, there was even a young fellow calling himself Polo who'd recently arrived with his father and uncle from

a place called... la... la something... Latin? He seemed like quite the storyteller. So... so what if a few thousand servants of the Khanate were lost to the sea? That's what soldiers were for. Plus, it sounds like it was a freak accident. Until the day that the Khanate was able to bring Japan to heel, well, accommodations may need to be made. Kublai would send, for now, a new embassy, to attempt once again to persuade the King of Japan to give him what he wanted without further force. Yet, fresh off their unexpected victory, the Shogunate officials responded to the Mongols' ambassador's arrival by ignominiously executing them one and all. This would not,

could not, be allowed to long stand. What had been perhaps a diplomatic misunderstanding had all at once been elevated to the highest level of offense against Mongol sensibilities. Such an outrage would be responded to in kind and with the full level of offense against Mongol sensibilities. Such an outrage would be responded to in kind and with the full measure of Mongol justice and vengeance. Yet such remuneration would have to wait its due course. Far too many pieces on the game board were already in motion, and a far larger check was about to be mated. Once Kublai had finally crushed the last vestiges of Song resistance and united China once more beneath his iron fist, there would be more than enough time, money, and manpower

to grind Japan into powder beneath the Mongol boot heel, if needs be. Plus, what happened in 1275, managing to get caught up in an off-season typhoon, was a freak once-off occurrence. I mean, it's not like that could ever happen again. Thanks for listening. Hey everyone, before going today, I just want to mention that it's swiftly coming up on the history of China's sixth anniversary. Woohoo! As such, I'd love to be able to do what I've done in years past, which is throw open the lines to your questions about any and all

things China. So please, shoot me a message on Facebook at slash THOC podcast, or via Twitter to the handle at THOC podcast, or via email at THOC podcast at gmail.com. Also, if you'd like to send a little anniversary gift my way, remember that you can get gifts in return if you sign up for as little as a dollar a show at patreon.com. So get those questions in. I'd love to get the anniversary episode out by the end of November. Thanks again, and see you next time. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over

turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.