An Introduction to the History of Japan

by Katsuro Hara

CHAPTER VIII

THE WELDING OF THE NATION THE POLITICAL DISINTEGRATION OF THE COUNTRY

A war with a foreign power or powers is generally a very efficient factor in history, conducing to the unification of a nation, especially when that nation is composed of more than one race. The German Empire, which was consolidated mainly by virtue of the wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870-1871, is one of the most exemplary instances. Japan, being surrounded by sea on all sides, has had more advantages than any continental country in moulding into one all the racial elements which happened to find their way into the insular pale. These are the very same advantages which Great Britain has enjoyed in Europe. We should have been able, perhaps, without any coercion from without, to become a solid nation by the sole operation of geographical causes. If we had been left, however, to the mercy of influences of those kinds only, then we might have been obliged to wait for long years in order to see the nation welded, for in respect of the complexity of racial composition, Japan cannot be said to be inferior to any national state in either hemisphere. To facilitate the national consolidation, therefore, the force acting from without was most welcome for us.

Of wars serviceable to such an end, however, there had been very scanty chances offered to us. Though the wars against the Ainu had continued much longer than is apt to be imagined by modern Japanese, and had made their influence felt in bringing about the consolidation of the Japanese as a nation, the spasmodic insurrections of the aborigines were but flickerings of cinders about to die out. For several centuries the Ainu had been a race destined only to wane irrevocably more and more, so that no serious danger was to be feared from that quarter. Outside of the Ainu, no other foreign people dared for a long time to invade us on so large a scale as to cause any serious damage.

As regards China, the dynasty of the Sung, which began to reign over the empire in the year 960, had been constantly harassed by the incursions of various northern tribes. After an existence of a century and a half, the greater portion of northern China was bereft of the dynasty by the Chin, a state founded by a Tartar tribe called the Churche. The Chin, however, was in turn overthrown in the year 1234 by the Mongols, another nomadic tribe, which rose in the rear of the latter state. Within a half century from that, the Chinese dynasty of the Sung, which had been long gasping in the south, drew its last breath under pressure of the same Mongols that founded the Empire of the Yuan.

From China, therefore, in the state it had been, we had nothing to fear. As to the Korean peninsula, which had come under the influence of China at the time of the T'ang dynasty, the state founded there by the inhabitants was enabled now to breathe freely on account of the anarchical condition of the suzerain state. Though Kokuri and Kutara had, in spite of our assistance, been both destroyed by the army of the T'ang, Shiragi, which had been left unmolested by the T'ang as a half independent ally, conquered the greater part of the peninsula, and the people of that state frequently pillaged our western coasts. This Shiragi surrendered at the beginning of the tenth century to Korea, a new state which arose in the north of the peninsula. The relations of the new Korea with our country were on the whole very peaceful, except for some interruptions caused by the incursions of the pirates from that country on our coast at the end of the same century.

Besides the Koreans, there were many tribes inhabiting the north and the east of Korea and along the coast of the Sea of Japan, which made themselves independent of China one after the other, though all the states founded by them had but an ephemeral existence. Some of those minor states kept up a very cordial intercourse with our country, while others acted in a contrary way. Among the latter may be counted the pirates from Toi, that is to say, from the region of a Churche tribe, though the real home of this throng of sea-thieves has not yet been identified with any exactness, pirates who devastated the island of Iki and the northern coast of Kyushu with a fleet consisting of more than fifty ships. This took place in the year 1019, and the repulse of this piratical attack was the last military exploit of the Fujiwara nobles.

After that complete tranquillity reigned in our western quarter for more than two centuries and a half until the first Mongolian invasion of 1274. Hitherto, to repel the inroads of pirates, the forces which could be set in motion in the western provinces only, had proved to be more than sufficient for the purpose. Against the first Mongolian invasion also, the retainers of the Shogun in the western provinces only were mobilised as usual by command from Kamakura. The battle scenes of the war were described by one of the warriors who took part in it, and painted by a contemporary master on a scroll, which has come down in good preservation to our day, and now forms one of the imperial treasures to be handed on to prosperity. The expeditionary fleet of the Yuan consisted of more than nine hundred ships, with 15,000 Mongols and Chinese and 8,000 Koreans on board, besides 6,700 of the crews, so that it was too overwhelming in numbers even for our valiant soldiers to fight against with some hope of victory. It was not by the valour of our soldiers alone, therefore, that the invasion was frustrated. The elements, the turbulent wind and wave, did virtually more than mere human efforts could have achieved in destroying the formidable enemy's ships.

Irritated at this failure of the first expedition, Khubilai, the Emperor of Yuan, immediately ordered the preparation of another expedition on a far larger scale. The second invasion of Japan was undertaken at last in the 1281, after an interval of seven years. This time the invading forces far outnumbered those of the first expedition, totalling more than one hundred thousand in all. On the other hand, the forces which the Shogunate could raise in the western provinces only proved this time plainly inadequate. Seeing this, Tokimune Hôjô, who was the virtual master of the Shogunate, mobilised the retainers in the eastern provinces too, and sent them to the battlefield in Kyushu. A fierce battle was fought on the shore near Hakata. Our soldiers made a desperate effort to prevent the landing of the enemy's troops, contending inch by inch against fearful odds, so that the Mongols could not complete their disembarkment, before a hurricane suddenly arose that swept away at least two-thirds of their men and ships. A lasting check was thus put upon the expansion of the triumphant Mongols on the east, just forty years after the battle of Liegnitz in Silesia had been fought successfully by the Teutonic nobles on the west against the same foe.