The Mongol Invasions of Japan 1274 and 1281 by Stephen Turnbull

Author:Stephen Turnbull
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Mongol Invasions of Japan 1274 and 1281
ISBN: 9781472800459
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

The most famous scene in the Mongol Invasion Scrolls is this one depicting an exploding bomb bursting in front of the wounded horse of Takezaki Suenaga. These bombs, thrown by catapult, were the ‘secret weapons’ of the Mongol invasions. This monochrome copy of the scrolls is owned by the Hakozaki Shrine in Fukuoka.

Several interesting points arise from these accounts. There is, first, the curious ridicule heaped upon young Shoni Kagetoki as he ‘officially’ starts the battle. The Mongols, of course, had already experienced Japanese small-group and individually orientated tactics on Tsushima and Iki and had crushed them, so they could afford to be contemptuous of any Japanese formality. Hakata also appears to be the first place that the exploding bombs were used. Both the soft-cased and iron-cased varieties caused amazement to the defenders, although it may be that their noise, combined with the gongs and drums, resulted in more problems for the Japanese men and horses than were caused by actual fragments from the explosions. The compiler of Hachiman Gudokun is also evidently struck by the control exercised over the Mongol Army by its general using drums and gongs. Nothing comparable to Mongol infantry tactics had been seen in Japan since the abandonment of Chinese-style footsoldier armies centuries before, and fighting by ordered weapons squads was not to make a reappearance in Japanese warfare for several centuries. The use of poisoned arrows was another innovation worthy of comment, and we may also note that many in the Mongol armies were mounted, as befitted their steppe heritage.

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