Japan: From the Japanese Government History

by Unknown

A draft reply to Kublai's dispatch was prepared at the court in Kyōto, and shown to Hōjō Tokimune, who, however, gave it as his opinion that inasmuch as the communication from China lacked the forms of prescribed courtesy, Japan's dignity precluded the sending of any answer. Orders were therefore conveyed to Dazaifu for the immediate expulsion of the Chinese envoys. In March of the following year Korean officials again arrived in the island of Tsushima escorting Mongolian envoys, who asked for a reply to the dispatch sent by their sovereign the preceding year. These envoys became involved in quarrels with the people of Tsushima, and finally took their departure, carrying away two of the latter as prisoners. Five months later, Kublai caused these two men to be restored to Japan, and made the act an occasion for addressing another dispatch to the Japanese emperor. Again Japan refrained from making reply. After an interval of two years, the khan sent in 1271 another ambassador, with a train of a hundred followers, who landed at Imatsu in Chikuzen. The ambassador's instructions were to present the dispatch of which he was bearer either to the imperial court or to the shōgun in Kamakura. He did not, however, intrust the original document to the Dazaifu officials, but gave them a copy only. This was at once forwarded to Kamakura, being from thence communicated to the court in Kyōto. On receiving it, the kwanryo took counsel of the other ministers of the crown and came to the decision that no reply should be given.

By this time the people of Japan had acquired full knowledge of the immense power wielded by Kublai Khan and of the vast conquests achieved by him in succession to his grandfather Genghis. Hence there was no little anxiety as to the outcome of these futile embassies. The emperor ordered prayers to be offered up as before at the shrines and temples throughout the empire. Kublai had now brought almost the whole of China into subjection and established his dynasty of Yuan. He continued to send embassy after embassy to Japan, and Japan on her side continued, with equal persistence, to make no reply to messages which she construed as national insults. Enraged by this indifference, the khan finally sent against Japan a fleet of a hundred and fifty war vessels under the command of Liu Fok-hêng, at the same time ordering Korea to reinforce this expedition. The invaders arrived at Tsushima toward the end of 1274, where they killed the governor. Thence they passed to the island of Iki and killed its acting high constable, and thereafter directed their forces against Imatsu in Chikuzen. The military nobles of Kiushū—Shōni, Ōtomo, Matsuura, Kikuchi and others—collected troops and made a stand at Hakozaki. The Yuan invaders, armed with guns, caused great havoc among the Japanese army, but the Chinese leader, Liu, received a wound that compelled him to retire, and a heavy gale arising destroyed numbers of the foreign war-vessels. The Korean general's ship was wrecked and he himself drowned. Finally, the remnant of the invading force escaped under cover of darkness. Once again after a few months the Yuan sovereign sent another envoy, but he was sent up to Kamakura and there put to death by Hōjō Tokimune.

Hōjō Sanemasa was now appointed to command at Dazaifu, and instructions were issued for the vigilant guarding of all the coast line in the south. Further, the imperial guards were temporarily withdrawn from Kyōto, and drafted into a large army recruited from the east of the empire and stationed at Dazaifu as well as at other important positions along the coast. Sanemasa was given the command of this army, and other members of the Hōjō family were dispatched to direct the military preparations in Harima and Nagato. Further, the territorial nobles of Kiushū received orders to construct fortifications along the coast, and this work, being vigorously carried on, was completed in 1279. That year the Chinese emperor again sent envoys, seeking to establish friendship and intercourse. They landed at Hakata, but were put to death by order of the shōgun's government. The Regent Tokimune, foreseeing the consequences of these complications, dispatched large bodies of troops from Kamakura to Kiushū, to repel the renewed attack inevitably pending from the west. By this time the feudal society of Japan seems to have been roused to its height of patriotism. It not only was determined to resist the invasion of the world-conqueror, but even plans were made to invade the continent and fight with the Khan on his own ground. The latter, on his part, had now completed his conquest of China, and, having attained the zenith of his power, resolved to gratify his long-cherished desire, supplemented as it was by indignation at the repeated slaughter of his ambassadors in Japan.

Accordingly in the middle of 1281, he assembled a force of 100,000 soldiers, whom, together with a contingent of 10,000 Koreans, he sent against Japan under the command of Hwan Bunko. The invading army touched at the island of Iki, and after a cruel massacre of its inhabitants, resumed their voyage toward Dazaifu. Thither the Japanese troops flocked from Kiushū, Chūgoku, and Shikoku to defend their country. Aided by the fortresses that had been erected along the coast, they fought stoutly. The Chinese, however, enjoyed the great advantage of possessing heavy ordnance, with which they bombarded the forts and slaughtered such multitudes of the Japanese soldiers that the latter were unable to meet them in open contest. Organized tactics as much characterized the invaders as personal valor and individual combat did the defending warriors. Nevertheless, the latter continued to resist so obstinately, that, although the contest waged for sixty days, the enemy could not effect a landing. Meanwhile, a rumor reached Kyōto that the Yuan invaders, having borne down all resistance in Kiushū, had pushed on to Nagato, and were on the point of advancing against Kyōto itself, thence to carry their arms into the Tōkai and Hokuriku districts.

The Emperor Gouda, deeply disquieted by these tidings, proceeded in person to the shrine of Iwashimizu Hachimangū, god of war, to pray for the safety of the country, and moreover dispatched an autographic supplication to the shrine of Daijingū in Ise, vowing that he would offer himself as a sacrifice to preserve the honor of his empire. But in Kiushū the contest continued fiercely when, on the last day of the seventh lunar month, a northwesterly storm swept down on the Chinese fleet and wrecked a number of the ships with immense loss of life. Those that survived the tempest, several thousands in number, took refuge in the island of Takashima off the coast of Hizen, and there, under the command of Chang Pak—Hwan having fled away in a vessel of exceptional strength—set themselves to cut timber and build new ships to carry them back to China. But Shōni Kagesuke, at the head of a body of the Kiushū troops, followed and attacked the fugitives, killing several hundreds and taking over a thousand prisoners, so that, in the end, only three out of the hundred thousand Yuan invaders succeeded in escaping alive to China. After this success the Kamakura government redoubled its efforts to place the defenses of the country on a strong footing. It was not till 1299 that the Chinese sovereign sent two Buddhist priests to Japan with a peaceful message. The country had been in a state of continuous defense, since the arrival of the first Mongol embassy thirty-one years previously. Never before had the Japanese nation encountered a more colossal struggle with a great conquering foe, nor had she since, till the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. It is noteworthy that in the former crisis it was the feudal forces which saved the land from foreign conquest.

If by this great service the Hōjō placed all Japan under obligation to them, it was also after this crisis that their power began to decline. Great sums of money had been devoted during the thirty years to maintaining constant religious services at the shrines and temples throughout the empire. The expense incurred on that account is said to have been greater even than the outlay in connection with military affairs, which in itself must have been immense. Moreover, after the invaders had been defeated and the danger averted, the rewards granted to Buddhist priests and Shintō officials far exceeded in monetary value the recompense given to the troops and their leaders. On the other hand, the wardens and territorial nobles, on whom the duty of defending the country had fallen, found the drain on their resources so heavy that they began to murmur. Thus the popularity of the shōgunate at Kamakura commenced to wane.

THE INVASION BY THE MONGOL TARTARS

Tokimune was succeeded by his son Sadatoki, and then followed Morotoki and Takatoki. During their regency the authority of the Hōjō rapidly declined. Takatoki, being a man of indolent disposition, entrusted the control of affairs wholly to one Nagasaki Takasuke, who was betrayed by avarice into such abuses of power that men's hearts were altogether estranged from the government. The fall of the Hōjō finally ensued in 1326, a century and a quarter after the first of those powerful rulers had risen from the position of a rear-vassal to the most puissant office in the land.

The circumstances of the downfall of the Kamakura government will be related in the next chapter. In the meantime, we shall observe the condition of society during the hundred and forty years of the rule of the Minamoto and the Hōjō. In regard to the customs of the upper classes, it is interesting to note that the elegance of the Kyōto nobles and the severe simplicity of the Kamakura soldiers, now the one, then the other, according to the varying circumstances, set the fashion of the day. When the warrior element was in the ascendant, its manners and customs were more or less taken as a model in Kyōto, while, on the other hand, Kyōto sometimes impressed its own fashions upon the military. An instance of the latter case is furnished by the story of the Taira family, whose fighting men gradually fell under the charm of the court life, and succumbed with comparative ease to the misfortunes that afterward overtook them. Minamoto-no-Yoritomo, however, fixed his headquarters at Kamakura and did not visit Kyōto except for very brief intervals. His habits of life were frugal and simple; he encouraged the samurai to adopt a severe military regimen, and he set his face resolutely against costly ostentation and enervating excesses.