How Did Japan Stop the Mongols?

Everyone knows the story: a "divine wind" saved Japan from the Mongols. But the Yuan dynasty's own history doesn't mention any wind the first time, and the second time, the commander's report and a survivor's account don't agree. In 1274 and again in 1281, Kublai Khan sent fleets across the sea to Japan. This film follows the war from Kublai's letter of 1266 to the storm of 1281: the envoys Kamakura beheaded, the stone wall along Hakata Bay, the summer the fleet spent stuck on its ships, and what one soldier said happened after the storm. Then we look at how the legend grew, and at the most famous picture of the war, part of which was painted in centuries later. Quotations from the Yuan history (Yuanshi, vol. 208) and the History of Goryeo (Goryeosa, vol. 28) are our own translations. Where a claim rests on a single source, the narration says so. Chapters 0:00 An empire and an island 1:28 A letter 3:25 1274 4:53 The next morning 5:40 The envoys 7:20 Seven years 8:33 1281 9:49 The storm 10:43 Two reports 12:13 The end of the war 13:11 The legend 14:53 Five stones near Kamakura Historical images shown in this video • Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba (the scrolls of Takezaki Suenaga), c. 1293, Museum of the Imperial Collections, Tokyo: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The marking of the later-added figures follows the research of Matsumoto Aya and Thomas Conlan. • Maps drawn from Natural Earth data (public domain). The extent of the Mongol Empire is approximate. Main sources • Yuanshi (History of Yuan), vol. 208, "Japan" • Goryeosa (History of Goryeo), vols. 27–28 • Thomas D. Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention (Cornell East Asia Series, 2001), and "Myth, Memory, and the Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan" • Nichiren, letter of 1275 (Ichinosawa Nyūdō gosho) • nippon.com, "Mongol Invasions 750 Years" series (2024) #history #japan #mongols