extant accounts of the actual fighting that took place on Tsushima, and afterwards on Iki island and the mainland of Kyūshū, show that the samurai were far from being stunned into inaction by the novelties of Mongol warfare. Language difficulties, of course, precluded the conventional name-shouting for any audience other than the samurai’s own comrades, but in terms of making a name for oneself, that audience was vital. It was also not impossible to figure out who were the officers among the dense Mongol phalanx, so the likely “worthy opponents” could indeed be targeted. And if the goal was simply to take the largest number of heads, the Mongol armies provided numerous targets for the mounted samurai archers. The clouds of Mongol arrows, some of which may have been poisoned, that were loosed in return from within the invading squads must have caused problems, but once the fight developed into hand-to-hand combat, there was no opportunity for such haphazard archery. It was then that the samurai sword came into its own. The long, curved, and razor-sharp blades cut deeply into the brigandine-like coats of the Mongol invaders, whose short swords were much inferior.
One outstanding example of a Tsushima samurai dealing successfully with the Mongol tactics appears in Yamada’s account, and tells of a samurai called Sukesada (his surname is not given, but he was probably of the Sō family) who killed twenty-four men on the Mongol army’s flank, probably with his bow. A grove of trees had conveniently broken up the Mongol phalanx, and at least one senior Mongol officer became Sukesada’s victim. But the enthusiastic Sukesada became isolated from his comrades, and a shower of arrows hit him, three of which pierced his chest.13
From a devastated Tsushima, the Mongol army moved on to Iki. Iki is a much smaller place than Tsushima, and in 1274 was under the governorship of Taira Kagetaka. Kagetaka received intelligence of the Mongols’ attack on Tsushima and immediately sent a request for reinforcements to Dazaifu, the regional center of government on Kyūshū. Unlike the samurai of Tsushima, however, the Japanese defenders of Iki were quickly driven back from the beaches and sought refuge inside Kagetaka’s castle—which was probably little more than a wooden stockade. Here the Japanese defenders held out, hoping for relief. When none came, Taira Kagetaka prepared to lead his men out in a final charge, but as they approached the gates with their bows drawn, they were confronted by a human shield consisting of scores of their fellow countrymen, who had been chained together. Abandoning their bows and arrows, the samurai drew their swords and plunged into the Mongol host. They were soon overwhelmed, and, in the face of certain defeat, Kagetaka withdrew to his castle to commit suicide along with his family. With resistance at an end, Iki was overrun, and among the cruel punishments inflicted upon the population, their prisoners had their hands pierced and were strung in a line along the Mongol ships that then proceeded to Kyūshū.
The Mongol “reconnaissance in force” was completed by a landing on the beaches of Hakata Bay. More details are known of this part of the operation than of the Tsushima and Iki raids because of the existence of a remarkable set of scroll paintings called the Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba.14 The scrolls are among the most important primary sources for the appearance and behavior of samurai of the thirteenth century, but were never intended to be a historical document for posterity. They were instead created purely and simply to press the claim for reward being put forward by a certain Takezaki Suenaga. It is his achievements that are recorded there, the first scroll covering the 1274 invasion, and the second dealing with the 1281 action.15 As a gokenin (house-man or retainer) of the ruling Hōjō shikken, Suenaga had rushed to defend Japan against the Mongols, but his motives were clearly more than simple patriotism. At the conclusion of hostilities, Suenaga felt that he had been denied the rewards that were properly his, so he took his complaints directly to the Hōjō’s capital of Kamakura. His efforts to obtain a reward were every bit as insistent as his efforts against the Mongols, and of much longer duration! The journey to Kamakura from his home province of Higo took five months each way, and the interview lasted the better part of a whole day. Suenaga eventually got his reward, even though his achievements were not quite as impressive as he seems to have thought. During the first invasion, he did not kill a single Mongol. His sole achievement was apparently leading a suicidal charge with only four companions, as the Mongols were retreating. His horse was killed under him, and Suenaga would almost certainly have been killed had another Japanese detachment not managed to rescue him.
A conch shell signalling trumpet.
Suenaga’s attitude towards fighting the Mongols in 1274 was one that conformed rigidly to samurai tradition. He still fought as a mounted archer, and the demands of personal glory were as dominant as ever. But by 1281 even Suenaga had changed, and his military record became more impressive when he took part in one of the famous “little ship” raids against the Mongol fleet, described in the next section. Using only his sword and his quick wits, Suenaga cut off enemy heads, showing that when the situation was appropriate, the sword could be wielded every bit as skillfully as the bow.
The most interesting section of the Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba shows Suenaga’s horse being shot from under him, while immediately in front there is an explosion from the Mongols’ “secret weapon.” The samurai had to contend not only with the unfamiliar formations adopted by the Mongols, but with exploding iron bombs thrown by catapult, as well.16 This was the first experience that the Japanese had of gunpowder weapons, which had been in use in China for over a century. They operated on a time fuse, and exploded as they passed into the Japanese ranks, shooting out iron fragments from inside the bombs, together with jagged pieces of the casing, in a deadly form of shrapnel.17 The Hachiman Gudōkun account says:
A war drum, which would be carried by two men.
One of the “little ship” raids on the Mongol fleet, where the samurai sword came into its own.
Whenever the Mongol soldiers took to flight, they sent iron bomb shells flying against us, which made our side dizzy and confused. Our soldiers were frightened out of their wits by the thundering explosions, their eyes were blinded, their ears deafened, so that they could hardly distinguish east from west.18
Until recently, no one was exactly sure what these bombs were. Earlier scholars suggested cannonballs, and put them forward as evidence that the Mongols used gunpowder as a propellant in the later thirteenth century. This has since been disproved, first of all by Needham, who made the link between the Chinese exploding bombs and those used in Japan.19 The invention of these bombs is credited to the Jin dynasty, and their first recorded use in war dates from the siege by the Jin of the Southern Song city of Qizhou in 1221. The fragments produced when the bombs exploded at Qizhou caused great personal injury, and one Southern Song officer was blinded in an explosion that wounded half a dozen other men.
Underwater archaeology over the past thirty years has added greatly to our knowledge of the Mongol invasions in general and the exploding bombs in particular, although physical evidence of the latter has taken years to acquire.20 In 1994 archaeologists discovered three wood and stone anchors at Kozaki harbor, a small cove on the southern coast of the island of Takashima. The largest anchor was still stuck into the seabed with its rope cable stretching toward the shore, and provided a tantalizing clue that a wreck lay nearby. In the 1994–1995 season, a diving team recovered 135 artifacts near the shoreline, then slowly traced the finds back into deeper water through the 2001 season. In October of that year, the patient fieldwork paid off with the discovery of the ship’s remains. The main portion of the wreck site lies in forty-five feet of water and was buried beneath four feet of thick, viscous mud. It was completely excavated by the end of 2002.
The objects found ranged from personal effects, such as a small bowl on which was painted the name of its owner (a commander called Weng) to provision vessels and the implements of war. The
