In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Takezaki Suenaga's Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan

by Thomas D. Conlan (Introduction)

In Little Need of Divine Intervention presents a fundamental revision of the thirteenth-century Mongol Invasions of Japan by revealing that the warriors of medieval Japan were capable of fighting the Mongols to a standstill without the aid of any "divine winds" or kamikaze. Conlan's interpretation of the invasions is supplemented with translations of the picture scrolls commissioned by Takezaki Suenaga, a warrior who fought against the Mongols. In addition, translations of nearly seventy administrative documents are provided, thereby enabling students of Japanese history reconstruct the invasions using contemporary sources. A rare copy of Takezaki Suenaga's Scrolls, reproduced in full, reveals hitherto unknown missing scenes. Furthermore, the scrolls' images can be now read in tandem with its narrative passages, translated in English for the first time. Please note that the entire book was intentionally printed from back to front, so that the reproduced scrolls unfold in Japanese order, from right to left. Thus the book's spine is on the right. This monograph will prove to be of great interest for students and scholars of medieval Japanese history, warrior culture, and the nature of Japan in an East Asian context.

Genres: History, Japan, Japanese Literature

324 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2010

About the author

Thomas Conlan, Professor of East Asian Studies and History, is interested in the political, social and intellectual transformations of Japan from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries.

Majoring in Japanese and History at the University of Michigan, he attended graduate school at Stanford University. Professor Conlan’s first published work, In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan, introduced an important picture scroll depicting the Mongol invasions of Japan.

His next monograph, State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth Century Japan, based on his Ph.D. dissertation, revealed how warfare transformed the social, political, and intellectual matrix of fourteenth-century Japan. He then wrote a general history of the samurai, entitled Weapons and Fighting Techniques of the Samurai Warrior, 1200-1877 .

In his most recent book, From Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth Century Japan, Professor Conlan analyzed the nature of political thought in medieval Japan.

Currently Professor Conlan is researching Japan’s fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and argues that the Ouchi, a daimyo of western Japan, were the central figures of their age.

Reviews

[Steve]

A portion of the Moko Shurai Ekotoba, late 13th - early 14th century

The Japanese are fierce and do not fear death....Ten Japanese soldiers will fight, even if it is against an enemy force of one hundred. They will forfeit their lives in battle even if they are unable to win. - Zheng Sixiao (1241-1318)

Nota bene: This is a twofer.


It took the Mongol Golden Horde seventy long years to carry out the conquest of China begun by Genghis Khan and completed by his grandson, Khubilai, who declared himself the Emperor of China in 1271, thereby founding the Yuan dynasty. Of course, the Mongols were busy conquering most of the rest of Eurasia, as well, including Korea, where they heard tales of islands to the East rich with gold. After sending a series of increasingly threatening diplomatic missions to Japan, Khubilai forced the Koreans to build a huge fleet of a thousand ships for the Mongols and man it with sailors, since the Mongols had absolutely no naval experience. A revolt by the Koreans to this extremely onerous command was swiftly crushed.

In Japan the Kamakura bakufu was in charge; it was a rule by military overlords in the name of a figurehead emperor,(*) but the imperial court, the shogun and the Hojo regent were all outraged by the Mongols' embassies and refused to receive or respond to them. The Japanese made some preparations, but the first invasion in 1274 caught them in a weak position.




In this map The Empire of the Great Khan is just the portion directly ruled by Khubilai. His relatives were busy in Central Asia and, ultimately, points much further west.


After sweeping away the small local forces on the islands of Tsushima and Iki and massacring most of the inhabitants, the Mongols and the Koreans they had impressed into their service landed on the main southern island of Kyushu,(**) where after a brief series of engagements in which both sides learned about the unusual tactics of their opponents the Mongol army boarded their ships (when one of their generals was shot in the face) and returned to Korea, passing through at least one violent storm. It thus seems that this first encounter was just a reconnaissance in force, but the combination of fighting and storm(s) entailed that only two-thirds of the original force landed safely in Korea.

It was an entirely different matter in 1281, when the Mongols sent two huge fleets against Kyushu, including a sizable Chinese contingent. But after beheading three Mongol envoys sent in 1275, the Japanese had made more serious preparations this time, especially after they had heard that the Southern Sung capital of Hangzhou had capitulated to the Mongols. They had actually planned a preemptory invasion of Korea that was not carried out, but the vessels they had constructed or accumulated proved to be essential in the upcoming defense of Japan.

The commanders of the two Mongol fleets, one sailing from Korea and the other from China, made a series of tactical errors that resulted in the Korean fleet being unable to land effectively and finding itself the brunt of multiple raids by Japanese in small vessels. The ferocity and efficacy of these raids obliged the Korean fleet to withdraw to Iki, where swarms of eager Japanese descended upon them in their small boats. Finally, the much larger Chinese fleet arrived to aid the discomfited Koreans, and the situation turned against the Japanese. The now monstrous Mongol fleet moved to an undefended part of the Kyushu coast in order to land its army; the Japanese mosquito swarm collected and did what it could. It was at this point the Japanese gods (kami) stepped in and sent the typhoon soon to go down in Japanese history as the kamikaze, which sundered both of the Mongol armadas and hurled their crushed vessels beneath the violent waves of Imari Bay; portions of the remains of these armadas have been found and studied by submarine archaeologists since the 1980's. Around 30 percent of the Koreans and between 60 and 90 percent (!) of the Chinese and Mongols did not return home. The event was so traumatic in China that even Marco Polo mentioned it in his Travels - probably the first mention of Japan in any European text.




Artist's reconstruction of one of the ships wrecked during the invasion of 1281 with scale representations of the Japanese boats


A remarkable contemporary witness to the Mongol invasions of Japan is the Moko Shurai Ekotoba (Mongol Invasion Scrolls), an illustrated text commissioned by Takezaki Suenaga, an apparently quite impetuous, minor samurai commander who took part in resisting both invasions and then exerted at least as much effort in getting what he viewed as a suitable reward from the bakufu.(***) This text is reproduced (regrettably, only in black and white), translated and thoroughly commented by Thomas Conlan in the very scholarly In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Takezaki Suenaga's Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan (2001), which also includes translations of other relevant, closely contemporary texts. In order to accommodate the original form of the scrolls, which read, of course, from right to left, this book is printed back to front! The last page of the book is the first page of the text, etc. A most unusual reading experience for this very Western reader. To supplement these witnesses I also read Stephen Turnbull's The Mongol Invasions of Japan 1274 and 1281 (2010), a slender, heavily illustrated text that provides a bit of the background and much of the tactics and execution of the engagements.(4*) Happily for me, the first page was the first page.



(*) In fact, the shogun had also become a figurehead by then; the head of the Hojo clan was actually running the bakufu as shikken (regent), but that was just replacing one ruling family of samurai by another.

(**) Two contemporary Japanese sources report that on Iki the Mongols captured civilians, threaded them together with a rope through holes made in their hands and then used them as human shields against the fine marksmanship of the Japanese archers.

(***) Bowdoin College has digitalized the various versions of the scrolls and made them available online here: http://www.bowdoin.edu/mongol-scrolls/

(4*) Turnbull's book appears in a series of similar books by Osprey Press aimed primarily at persons interested in martial history. Because I had had a very rewarding experience reading his full scale book Samurai Invasion: Japan's Korean War 1592 -1598, I thought I would give this book a try, even though its focus on weapons, tactics and the course of the engagements is rather narrow. Within this limited scope the book is quite acceptable.

[Madison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The scrolls themselves were really interesting. I got lost after that though, part two was pretty difficult for me to digest with all the footnotes to other sources I've never read. Overall a good read about the supposed effectiveness of the "divine winds”.

[Kendra Strand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent translation that features the manuscript in a way that is usually overlooked entirely.

[Scott]

Translations are unnecessary and the book fails to have any real use

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent cache of translations, and a great book for primary sources, and, best of all, bound back-to-front, to preserve the flow of the original scroll (which would have been read right-to-left). A sound scholarly analysis of the Mongol Invasions of Japan, too, and the immediate re-telling of them on both sides, with far-reaching implications for historiography in general. For the more casual reader, it's a brisk read, entertaining, and sheds light on the real mindset of the samurai in the age of the horse and bow. It was all about taking heads, litigation, and getting paid.