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Chapter 2

SWORDS IN SERVICE

Following the conclusion of the Gempei and Shōkyū Wars, the Japanese sword began to acquire a new role and a new significance. Although in domestic conflicts the emphasis was still on the mounted archer, knowledge both of the samurai sword and of the swordsmen who wielded it spread abroad to other countries. The result was that the sword itself and the art of the samurai swordsman became exportable items. The process began with some very harsh lessons concerning the sword’s strength and efficiency, and developed into a situation where swords were for sale and the ideal of the samurai as primarily a mounted archer slowly began to fade.

This development could hardly have been guessed at in 1192, when the samurai of the Minamoto family had achieved the establishment of a native military dictatorship by means of their superior Way of Horse and Bow. The Minamoto, however, whose personal supremacy seemed as well assured as that of the institution of the bakufu itself, did not have long to enjoy their power, for within three generations they were supplanted by the Hōjō family. The Hōjō, nevertheless, showed a surprising respect for the institution of the shogunate and ruled Japan until 1333 in the capacity of regents. It was therefore under the Hōjō shikken (regency) that the samurai swordsman began to export his wares.

The Dwarf Robbers

The first foreign country to suffer from the Japanese sword was Korea, and the means was provided by the wakō, the pirates of Japan.¹ This word consists of two characters. The first, wa, can mean dwarf, and was also an ancient Chinese appellation for Japan. Kō means robber or brigand, making the compound that appears in Korean as waegu and in Chinese as wokou.

The long and disgraceful career of the wakō began during the early thirteenth century. From 1218 onwards, the Koreans had been resisting attacks from the advancing Mongols in the north of their country, a long conflict that had denuded the southern coastal area of soldiers.² Korea therefore lay open to pillage from the seas, and the wakō took full advantage of the situation, although drought and disastrous harvests in the area of Japan that produced the pirates have also been suggested as motives for their actions. The wakō heartlands were certainly poor, and this forced their inhabitants to seek sustenance from the sea, legitimately or otherwise.³ Mounted archery would have been impossible in seaborne raids, so the wakō, even those wealthy enough to afford horses, fought on foot. Bows and arrows would still have been seen in plenty, but swords and naginata were the weapons of choice in the circumstances of a raid.

In 1223, two years after the Shōkyū War had ended, gangs of Japanese pirates launched their first attacks on Korea’s southern coast from locations on the northern coast of Kyūshū and the islands of Iki and Tsushima, which lie in the straits between the two countries. Further raids followed in 1225, 1226, and 1227, and are well documented in both Japanese and Korean sources. A Japanese description of the 1226 raid identifies the culprits as being from the “Matsuura gang” (Matsuura-tō), who were located in Hizen Province. This raid was a much larger attack than the raid by two ships noted for 1225, because “several tens of ships” were involved. Pirates from Tsushima acted as guides, and there was apparently some participation by unemployed samurai from elsewhere in Japan, the end of the Shōkyū War having left them without work. Nevertheless, so fierce was the Korean resistance that half of the raiders were killed, while the rest returned with valuables, having burned and plundered villages. In the 1227 raid, the Korean island of Koje was targeted. This time most of the pirates escaped during the night, without meeting resistance, but two of them were captured and beheaded.⁴ The two attacks of 1227 led to a protest from Korea, to which the authorities on Kyūshū responded positively by executing ninety pirates in the presence of Korean envoys.⁵

The use of the samurai sword is demonstrated by Tominori Suke’emon Masakata, his sword raised with both hands, as a brazier and charcoal are thrown at him.

Mounted combat between two samurai armed with swords. Each is wearing a horo, the ornamental cloak supposedly used as an arrow-catcher, which distinguished an important samurai, such as a messenger between allied commanders.

These executions brought the raids to a halt for over thirty years. In 1259 the wakō returned to Korea, and again in 1263 and 1266, but by then the political situation in Korea had changed dramatically. By 1259, after a succession of Mongol invasions and the flight of the Korean court, the Mongol control of Korea was virtually complete. Korea’s fate was finally to be sealed in 1273 by a dynastic marriage between the Korean crown prince and a daughter of Khubilai Khan, but by then the considerable naval resources of Korea were already at the disposal of the first Yuan (Mongol) Emperor of China, as Khubilai Khan became in 1271. It was not long before these invaders turned their attentions towards Japan, and the pirate families of Kyūshū soon found themselves wielding their swords in self-defense.

Two samurai fight the Mongols on the beach on Tsushima Island. (from a votive painting in the shrine on the site of the Battle of Kowada)

Khubilai Khan’s first approaches to Japan were diplomatic ones. In 1266 he sent two envoys on a goodwill mission. The two men passed through Korea, where they were strongly urged to abandon any plans to visit Japan, and to return to China lest they risk their lives.⁶ This was a reaction that may well have puzzled the Chinese, because their traditional view of the Japanese had always been a positive one. From Japan had come many an earnest seeker after truth, such as the monk Saichō (767–822), who had introduced Tendai Buddhism to Japan. In 719 the arrival of a group of envoys from Japan had occasioned the comment that Japan was a “country of gentlemen.”⁷

Following the failure of the 1266 embassy, a further mission was dispatched in 1269. After a year the envoy reported back to Khubilai Khan that, in his opinion, the Japanese were “cruel and bloodthirsty” and lived in “a country of thugs.”⁸ Japan was certainly projecting a very different image from that of the peaceful Nara period! The Japanese had, after all, experienced a century of warfare and the establishment of a warrior class, and this negative view may well have been one factor behind Khubilai Khan’s decision to subdue this unruly island empire and bring it under his sway. In addition to passing on his comments about the Japanese, the envoy had delivered Khubilai Khan’s demand for tribute from Japan, which had provoked a harsh reaction. The Japanese, who fully appreciated the threat of invasion conveyed by the demand, were placed very much on their guard, and they did not have long to wait for the outcome. Khubilai Khan gave orders to Korea to supply nine hundred ships and an army of five thousand men. The fleet that finally set sail in 1274 included fifteen thousand Yuan (Mongol) soldiers and eight thousand Koreans, together with a very large number of crewmen.⁹

The First Mongol Invasion

The Mongol invasions of Japan (Khubilai Khan’s army returned in 1281) provided the only occasion in over six hundred years when the samurai were fighting enemies other than themselves. The first Mongol attempt at invasion was a short-lived affair, fitting the usual Mongol pattern of sending out a reconnaissance in force prior to a major campaign. Much of their time was taken up in crossing from Korea and devastating the islands of Tsushima and Iki, the two islands that have always provided the easiest means of crossing the straits. The first landfall on Japanese territory was made on Tsushima, which lies much nearer to Korea than it does to Japan. Tsushima consists of two islands, and most of the invading force came ashore on the complex and ragged coastline between the two islands, where many safe anchorages could be found. A particularly fierce battle took place at Kowada, where a Shintō shrine now commemorates the battle.¹⁰

In charge of Tsushima’s defense was Sō Sukekuni (1207–74), the deputy shugo (governor). He appears to have risen to the occasion splendidly, although in the subsequent fierce fighting the pace was first set by the Mongols, leaving the Japanese defenders confused by the invaders’ unfamiliar tactics. The most noticeable divergence from the Japanese tradition was the way in which the Mongols advanced in large dense groups, controlled by drums and to the accompaniment of much noise. In the lively, epic words of Yamada’s retelling of the story, they:

... advanced in phalanx, which was also a novelty to the Japanese, protecting themselves most effectually with their shields.... The Mongolian shafts harassed them terribly; still all the Japanese soldiers fought according to their own etiquette of battle. A humming arrow, the sign of commencing the combat, was shot. The Mongols greeted it with a shout of derision. Then some of the best fighters among the Japanese advanced in their usual dignified, leisurely manner and formulated their traditional challenge. But the Mongol phalanx, instead of sending out a single warrior to answer the defiance, opened their ranks, enclosed each challenger, and cut him to pieces. The invaders moved in unchanging formation, obeying signals from their commanding officers.¹¹

Yamada is, of course, making the assumption that the issuing of challenges and the seeking out of a worthy opponent were the norm in the warfare of the time—an assumption that was questioned in the previous chapter. But even if that had been the expected way to fight, surely no samurai would have been so stupid as to think that the Mongols spoke Japanese! The essential dichotomy between Japanese and Mongol tactics was that the samurai preferred to fight as individuals targeting other individuals, while the Mongols fought in dense groups. An anonymous work of the fourteenth century, called Hachiman Gudōkun, sets out precisely the problems that faced the samurai: “Calling our names to one another, as in Japanese warfare, we expected fame or ignominy to be found in contesting against individuals, but in this battle the hosts closed as one.”¹²

The 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 vessels include a large number of storage jars in various sizes, all of them hastily and crudely made, which hints at the rapid, if not rushed, pace of the Khan’s mobilization for the invasion. So, too, do the anchor stones. Chinese anchor stones of the period are usually large, well-carved, single stones that were set into the body of the stock to weight the anchor. Examples may be found on display in the Hakozaki Shrine in Fukuoka and at Setaura on Iki. Those found at Takashima are only roughly finished and made of two stones. More easily and quickly completed than their longer, more finished counterparts, they are not as strong as the single-stone anchors. It may be that these hastily fabricated anchors contributed to the fleet’s demise in the famous storm that dashed Khubilai’s hopes for the conquest of Japan (see the following section).

As the advancing Mongols came within bowshot, Shoni Kagesuke suddenly turned in his saddle and sent a well-aimed arrow into the Mongol leader. This scene is depicted on the side of the memorial to the heroes of the Mongol Invasions, in Hakata.

The weapons recovered from the site included bundles of iron arrow-tips or crossbow bolts, spearheads, and more than eighty swords. But the most exciting finds were the ceramic projectile bombs, of which six were recovered from the wreck. Some are filled with gunpowder, others with iron shards also, just as we would expect from the Chinese sources.²¹

The Second Mongol Invasion

The Mongol invaders returned to Japan in 1281, and this time they were determined both to conquer and occupy the country, as evidenced by the inclusion of farm implements on board the invasion fleet.²² The vanguard of the force attacked Tsushima and Iki and then attempted to land in Hakata Bay. As before, the ferocity of the Japanese defense forced them back, but the Mongols established themselves on two islands in the bay, one of which, Shiga, was connected to the mainland by a narrow spit of land. From these islands they launched attacks against the Japanese for about a week.

The Japanese responded with night raids against the Mongol ships. The small boats, holding between ten and fifteen samurai, would close with a Mongol ship under cover of darkness, and lower their own masts to make bridges for boarding. The samurai would then engage in hand-to-hand fighting with their swords. On one occasion, thirty samurai swam out to a Mongol ship, decapitated the entire crew, and then swam back. Two renowned heroes of these raids hailed from local families who were firmly associated with pirate activities: Kusano Jirō led a raid in broad daylight and set fire to a ship even though his left arm was cut off, while Kōno Michiari also led a daytime raid with two boats. Thinking the Japanese were coming to surrender, the Mongols allowed them to come close, at which point they were boarded and a high-ranking general was captured. Attempts were also made to dislodge the Mongols from Shiga island.

The Mongol response to the raids was to stretch chains between their ships and throw stones with catapults to sink the Japanese vessels. But at the end of this phase of the invasion, the bravery of the samurai, unaided by any storm, led the Mongol fleet to withdraw to Iki Island, there to await the arrival of the southern Chinese contingent, which made up the second phase of the invasion. By the early part of the following month, this huge armada had begun arriving at various parts of the Japanese coast, from the Gotō islands around to the west to Hakata. They eventually made rendezvous to the south of Iki, near the island of Takashima, where the Japanese launched a bold raid that deserves the title of the Battle of Takashima. The fighting lasted a full day and night, but the Japanese were eventually driven off by sheer weight of numbers. A massive attack on Hakata Bay now looked inevitable, but it never happened.

Within days of the Japanese attack at Takashima, a typhoon blew up, and was devastating in its effects. Korean casualties were 7,592 out of 26,989 men, nearly 30 percent, but the Mongol and Chinese figures were much higher, between 60 and 90 percent. Forced by the Japanese raids to stay in their ships, and unable to drop anchor in protected harbor waters, the Mongol fleet was obliterated. Tens of thousands of men were left behind with the wreckage as the remains of the fleet headed home, and most of these were killed in Japanese attacks over the following few days. The typhoon became known as the kamikaze (divine wind), sent by the sun goddess to aid her people.²³ It was this term, kamikaze, that the suicide pilots of World War II adopted as their title, thus identifying themselves with the successful destruction of an invader.

Decisive though the typhoon was, it would have been minimal in its effectiveness if the determination and fighting qualities of the samurai had not forced the entire fleet to lie at anchor with all their armies on board, unable to establish a beachhead. The kamikaze has tended to overshadow such achievements, but there are many recorded examples of superlative samurai archery and swordsman-ship defeating Mongol forces.

Swordsmanship is most evident in the “little ship” raids at Takashima, but on land, traditional samurai horseback archery was still much preferred. A good example of the latter is provided by the action fought by three generations of the Shōni family on Kyūshū and Iki. Shōni Kakuie was the governor of Dazaifu, and was in charge of a combined operation during the second invasion of 1281. The Japanese aim was to push the Mongol fleet further out into the bay by seaborne attack, while a mounted army speedily reinforced the coastal area, where a detachment of the Mongol army was expected to attempt its next landing. The arrival of the Shōni force put great heart into the defenders, who rallied to the attack, but there was a grave danger of the Japanese army being surrounded by the vastly larger Mongol force, who poured their customary showers of arrows down upon them. At this point Kakuie’s nineteen-year-old grandson, Suketoki, with supreme confidence, rode up to the Mongol lines where he had spotted a person who was obviously of very senior rank. Suketoki shouted out his name, put an arrow to his bow, and, without waiting for a reply, shot the Mongol general clean through the chest.

This triumph provided just the inspiration the Japanese had been looking for, and proud grandfather Shōni Kakuie led the samurai in a charge into the midst of the Mongols, whereupon fierce hand-to-hand fighting took place. The battle continued until nearly dark, when Kakuie withdrew his troops to the safety of the Japanese fortified lines. One by one the stragglers withdrew, until only the contingent commanded by Kakuie’s son Kagesuke was left, and they were being pursued vigorously by a number of Mongol horsemen led by another general. As they came within bowshot, Shōni Kagesuke suddenly turned in his saddle and sent a well-aimed arrow into the Mongol leader.²⁴

The next battle took place as the Mongols regrouped on the island of Iki, where the grandson, Shōni Suketoki, had his domain. A fierce fight with the retreating Mongols took place at Setanoura on the eastern coat of the island. Here Shōni Suketoki fought bravely to the last, and is commemorated on Iki as the island’s other great hero of the resistance against the Mongols. Like Taira Kagetaka, Suketoki has a shrine dedicated to him, and his fine equestrian statue stands in front of one of Iki’s main harbors.

The experience of defeating the Mongols was one never to be forgotten, and the exploits of the Kyūshū warriors joined those of their ancestors in the amalgam of myth and tradition that was to carry their memory through another six centuries. But we look in vain to discern any real changes in the techniques of combat as a direct result of the experience. Even though the samurai had been faced in 1274 with an alien enemy with alien ways, the traditional ways of fighting as horseback archers had been found to be sufficient in most circumstances. Evidence for this is provided by the design of the stone wall around Hakata Bay, erected in anticipation of the Mongols’ return. The wall sloped down gradually at its rear so that horses could be ridden up it.

There may, however, have been a fresh realization that different styles of fighting and behavior might have to be adopted at times. For example, the “little ship” raids of the 1281 invasion used fighting techniques profoundly different from those developed for a force of mounted archers. The ship-to-ship fighting required good swordsmanship, and it may perhaps have been Japan’s good fortune that the men who bore the brunt of the Mongol incursions were the same impoverished warriors of Kyūshū who had so recently exported their sword-fighting skills to the Asiatic mainland. As noted earlier, the names that appear most prominently in the “little ship” raids are from the established pirate families of Kyūshū, who were to be joined so enthusiastically by such grandees as Takezaki Suenaga.

The Pirates Return

When Zheng Sixiao, a Chinese scholar who was committed to the restoration of the Song Dynasty, heard of the defeat of the ruling Yuan emperor by the Japanese, he was ecstatic, and composed a poem to celebrate the victory. But he was also very wary of the Japanese, writing that they were “fierce and do not fear death,” and that ten Japanese soldiers would fight an enemy unit of one hundred men. He also made a particular reference to Japanese swords, writing that “their swords were extremely sharp.”²⁵ Similar comments were recorded in a later description of the wakō made to the king of Korea. This account states that the pirates were a distinct subgroup of Japanese. They took their families on their boats with them when they went on raids. Their dark skin, sun-bleached clothing, accessories, and language all differed from those of other Japanese. They were skilled at using bows and swords, and adept at diving under water and boring holes in the bottom of enemy boats.²⁶ Later descriptions are expressed in a very similar vein, as for example the Riben kao of Ye Xianggao:

It is their habit to be fond of looting. They disdain life and are bloodthirsty.... The blades of the Japanese swords are sharp. Chinese swords are inferior. The men go hatless and their hair is dishevelled. They have branded faces and tattooed bodies.²⁷

Bu Datong added in his Bei Wo tuji that the Japanese “make their homes on islands and use boats instead of horses. They are adept with swords and spears, and use them on their raids.”²⁸

Zheng Sixiao’s wish for the end of the Yuan Dynasty came true in 1368 when Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–1398), who had overthrown the Mongols in the previous year, became China’s first emperor of the Ming dynasty. As was customary, the new emperor dispatched missions to neighboring countries, including Japan, to inform them of this momentous development. As was also customary, he encouraged the recipients to send tribute to the new Son of Heaven. By this time the Japanese had clearly returned to piracy, because the message he sent to Japan in 1369 included the words, “Japanese pirates repeatedly plunder areas along the coast, separating men forever from their wives and children and destroying property and lives.” He went on to demand that Japan should either send tribute and declare itself a vassal state of China, or ensure by military means that its least attractive exports stayed at home. In fact the wakō were now raiding further than ever, taking in the Chinese provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian.²⁹

The Ming embassy was received at Hakata by Prince Kanenaga, who had been sent to Kyūshū by the “Southern Court.” This is the name given to one of the two warring imperial factions whose rivalries dominated Japanese politics and warfare during much of the fourteenth century. The wars between them are known as the Nambokuchō Wars (the wars between the Southern and Northern Courts). The continued unrest meant that Prince Kanenaga lacked both the authority and the means either to consent to vassal status or to suppress the pirates. The embassy was therefore a resounding failure, a disaster compounded by the imprisonment of the unfortunate ambassador and the execution of some of his colleagues.

In 1370 another envoy was sent to confront Prince Kanenaga over his failure to control his subjects. At first the threats seemed to be effective, and the necessary guarantees were given. It was only when the Chinese discovered that the prince was no more than a provincial military commander that they realized that his new promises of tribute and pirate curtailment were worthless. The Ming emperor was greatly displeased, and wrote that the Japanese were petty thieves with shorn hair and mottled clothes, who spoke a language that sounded like croaking frogs.³⁰ Numerous other Ming documents add descriptions of the cruelties of the Japanese pirates on their raids: When they attacked a community, they burned government offices and private houses to the ground, desecrated graves, and stole valuables. Murder and rape were commonplace. In 1439 in Zhejiang, children were tortured with boiling water, and pregnant women cut open by the blades of the Japanese swords.³¹

Korea also suffered anew. During the ten years between 1376 and 1385, there were 174 recorded wakō raids on Korea. Some of these expeditions amounted to miniature Japanese invasions of Korea, with as many as three thousand wakō penetrating far from the coast, ravaging Kaesong, the Koryo dynasty’s capital, and even pillaging as far north as P’yongyang. Ships carrying tax rice (taxes paid in rice) were seized, and when the Koreans decided to transport the rice by land, the wakō followed them inland and sacked the granaries. In addition to looting property, the wakō became slave traders, taking the well-established Korean tradition of slave owning to its logical conclusion by shipping their captives back to Japan. In 1429, Pak So-saeng, sent on a diplomatic mission to Japan, was to report on how conditions had improved since the “bad old days”:

Images of the Japanese, from the Ming dynasty Xuefu quanbian. The picture on the lower right shows a wako with a drawn sword.

Previously, the Wa pirates would invade our country, seize people, and make slaves of them.... Wherever we went and whenever our ships put into port in Japan, slaves would struggle against each other in their efforts to flee to us, but they were unable to do so because of the chains that their masters had put on them.³²

Matters improved for Korea under the guidance of Yi Song-gye, who was later to found the Yi, or Choson, dynasty. He believed in hitting back at the wakō. In 1380, over five hundred Japanese ships were set ablaze at the mouth of the Kum river after being blasted by Korean cannon; three years later, Admiral Chong Chi, in command of forty-seven ships, chased away more than one hundred Japanese ships with gunfire. In 1389, a successful raid was carried out against the pirates based on the Japanese island of Tsushima. Three hundred Japanese ships were burned and more than one hundred Korean prisoners were repatriated.

But the most important influence against the wakō was political, because in 1392, the same year in which the Choson dynasty was founded, Japan acquired a new shogun. His name was Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and in addition to the achievements for which he is best known—the reconciliation between the rival Southern and Northern Courts and the building of the Kinkakuji, or Golden Pavilion, in Kyoto—Yoshimitsu accepted from the Ming emperor the nominal title of “King of Japan.” Ashikaga Yoshimitsu thereby formally assumed the status of subject of the Ming, and restored a situation that the Chinese considered to have existed from the Han dynasty until it was grievously sundered by acts of piracy and war. The benefit to Yoshimitsu and to Japan was trade. Henceforth, trade would be carried on under the tally system, which legitimated voyages that—in the eyes of the Ming, at any rate—brought “tribute” to the court of the Son of Heaven.³³

The newly licensed trade agreements with the Ming provided the stability that both governments needed to deal with piracy. That the Japanese did take measures to control the pirates is evident from 1405, when an envoy to China from the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu arrived with twenty captive pirates from Iki and Tsushima. The Ming emperor was delighted, and handed the pirates back to the envoy to be disposed of as he thought fit. Their fate was to be taken to Ningbo and boiled to death in a cauldron.³⁴

Following this dramatic demonstration of goodwill, trade flourished legitimately, and Japanese daimyō (feudal lords) returned captives for profitable gifts. The Koreans conducted business through the Sō family of Tsushima, whom they held personally responsible for the good behavior of the Japanese. Raids declined greatly, but when there were new incursions in 1419, the Korean government quickly took drastic measures in retaliation. Seven hundred and thirty-seven lawful Japanese traders were executed as a reprisal, and another punitive expedition was launched against Tsushima at a time when it was known that a wakō fleet from Tsushima was out at sea. Under the orders of King T’aejong, two hundred ships and seventeen thousand Korean soldiers set out to destroy the pirates’ bases before they had time to return.³⁵ Sō Sadamori (1385–1452) bore the brunt of the attack, which is celebrated in the annals of Tsushima as the Oei Invasion. Sadamori appears to have been as successful at diplomacy as he was at fighting, because he entered into successful negotiations with the Koreans. He promised to quell the wakō, but it was his warning of the approaching typhoon season, which would have stirred some very acute folk memories among the invaders, that finally persuaded them to withdraw.³⁶

Onchi Sakon, a follower of the great loyalist Kusunoki Masashige, fights bravely. His helmet crest is in the form of a tengu.

In that same year of 1419, the Chinese also hit back against pirate raiding. A large wakō fleet was ambushed off the Liaodong Peninsula, and perhaps a thousand Japanese pirates were relieved of their heads. At the same time, diplomatic discussions took place between the Choson court and the Ashikaga shogun on ways to curb the wakō by more peaceful means. One result was a report from the Korean ambassador Pak So-saeng in 1429, recommending a direct approach to the particular Japanese daimyō who controlled the territories where the pirates lurked. After all, as another ambassador reported in 1444, these people lived in a barren land that constantly threatened them with starvation, so piracy was only natural to them. It was a generous memorandum, but one that merely echoed comments that had been made earlier.

Swords in Action

Perhaps because of tales taken home by the survivors of the Mongol invasions, or more likely because of the destructive effects of Japanese pirates, the inhabitants of continental Asia had acquired a healthy respect for the qualities of the Japanese sword by the beginning of the fifteenth century. Thus, when, under the influence of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Japan began to trade with Ming China, swords were among the objects most in demand. Initially, they were needed for use against the pirates, but as Yoshimitsu had taken pains to demonstrate his determination to curtail this aspect of his countrymen’s activity by boiling a few of them alive, this need disappeared. The largest quantity of swords shipped in one consignment totalled thirty thousand, which led to a major disagreement over the price.³⁷

What is interesting from the point of view of samurai fighting arts is that, although the Japanese sword is commonly regarded as a very precious and symbolic individual weapon, here we have evidence of mass production. We also read of blades breaking or becoming stuck in the bodies of victims. The Japanese sword was sometimes not all that its reputation would have led one to expect.³⁸

Nor was it always used for the noble purposes of honorable combat. One menial task for which the short katana sword was very frequently used was the decapitation of defeated enemies. This practice, known as buntori (literally, “taking one’s share”), was no mere finishing stroke to make sure that the man was dead. The head was taken as a trophy, the best evidence of duty done, because it proved the samurai’s competence in combat. Nothing was more acceptable or more certain to win recognition from a samurai’s lord than the presentation of the enemy’s head. A major victory would always end with the piling up of dozens, even hundreds, of severed heads in the commander’s headquarters.

An intense ritual attended this bizarre but critical practice, which went from mere proof of a job well done, to a practice that developed its own mystique. Although its origins are obscure, the persistence of the tradition of head collection spans the entire period of samurai warfare and dates back at least to the system of assessing battlefield merit for the ancient conscript armies.³⁹ As early as 1062, we read of Minamoto Yoshiie riding into Kyoto carrying the head of the rebel Abe Sadato as proof that he had fulfilled the government’s commission. A few years later, he was to throw the heads of vanquished rebels into a ditch when the government refused to reward the quelling of a rebellion undertaken without the correct requisition. Two centuries on, the chronicle Azuma Kagami records that the insurrection of Wada Yoshimori in 1213 yielded 234 heads of defeated warriors, which were duly displayed along the banks of the Katasegawa River.

Head collection was never a casual practice. There was a hierarchy of value based on the rank or prestige of the victim and the circumstances under which the victor had killed him. Great rivalry attended the choice of a potential victim, and there are records of heads being stolen before presentation. Someone who had taken a particularly eminent head would want it to be noted immediately. Brandishing a fresh head on the point of a spear or a sword was not unknown, and the effects on morale could be profound. The Azuma Kagami tells us how Minamoto Yoritomo exhibited the heads of nineteen enemy samurai after the Battle of Azukashiyama in 1189, while a thirteenth-century warrior called Obusuma Saburō liked to maintain a steady supply of fresh heads hanging on the fence surrounding the riding field of his home.⁴⁰ Given the importance of the custom, it is not surprising that a little deception was sometimes practiced, but to have five different heads displayed, each with the name of the same man, was to invite considerable ridicule:

Suda and Takahashi galloped through the capital gathering up the heads of the wounded and dead men from ditches here and there, and hung them up in rows at the Rokujō river bed, eight hundred and seventy-three of them. Yet not so many of the enemy had been struck down. Some were merely heads brought forth by Rokuhara warriors who had not joined in the fighting, but sought to gain honour for themselves, heads of commoners from the capital and other places, labelled with various names. Among them were five heads labelled, “The lay monk Akamatsu Enshin” which were all hung up in the same way, since all of them were heads of unknown men. Seeing them, the urchins of the capital laughed.⁴¹

The main focus of head collection, however, came after a battle, when most of the ritual surrounding a victory celebration concerned the formal inspection of the heads by the victorious general. He would sit in state, and one by one the heads would be brought before him for comment. These ceremonies appear to have been quite informal affairs until the fourteenth century. The Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba shows head inspection taking place during the Mongol invasions. The heads, from which blood is still seeping, have been casually placed on the ground.⁴² The ceremony later grew into one of considerable formality, to which the victorious commander would give his full attention—a matter that proved to be the undoing of Imagawa Yoshimoto in 1560. He was so engrossed in head viewing that he suffered a surprise attack, and a few hours later it was his own head that was being viewed by someone else!

The press of battle often left little opportunity for anything other than simple head identification. The formalities had to wait until later, and during the Age of Warring States it became most undesirable for a daimyō to be presented with an untidy trophy. Prior to his inspection, the heads would be washed, the hair combed, and the resulting trophy made presentable with cosmetics, tasks traditionally done by women. The heads would then be mounted on a spiked wooden board with red labels for identification. This act of cleaning the heads was in part a sign of respect for fallen warriors. It also represented a tribute to the victors’ pride as men who could defeat heroic enemies.

An obsessive concentration on head collection could, of course, be detrimental to the course of a battle. If one’s finest warriors were expected to quit the field with their trophies or spend time in collection, then the army’s progress would be unnecessarily slowed. One samurai was felled by an arrow while taking a head.⁴³ We therefore read of prohibitions on head taking, and the substitution of written reports on battlefield glory. Heads might therefore be cut off, recorded, and then discarded. One warrior even contented himself with a piece of his enemy’s armor as a trophy because the fighting was so fierce.⁴⁴ Time was far better spent in following the general’s plan of victory than in furthering one’s own reputation.

Yet in spite of the evident quality of Japanese swords the style of samurai warfare during the fourteenth and early fifteenth century remained very similar to that employed in previous conflicts. Thomas Conlan’s fascinating study of the Nambokuchō Wars shows that the bow remained the dominant weapon, because arrows caused on average 73 percent of all wounds. These wounds, however, were not necessarily lethal, a conclusion that is supported by the image of the monk Jomyō at the Battle of Uji in 1180 counting sixty-three arrows or arrow wounds in his armor or his body. In Conlan’s fourteenth-century example, one Imagawa Yorikuni required twenty arrows to finish him off.⁴⁵ Wounds could, however, be cumulative in their effects, so that Wada Takanori was unable to see properly because his wounds had not healed from a previous battle. Takeda Gorō was unable to hold a sword because of his damaged fingers, but went into battle regardless.⁴⁶

Swords were still primarily a weapon for use while dismounted. Many of the battles of the Nambokuchō Wars were fought in wooded and mountainous terrain, where horses were not appropriate, making swords the weapon of choice. Also, the sight of a naked tachi blade being swung close to a horse’s head might cause the mount to buck and throw off its rider, so it was sometimes better to dismount first. Just as in the case of the “little ships” raids against the Mongols, the choice of weaponry depended upon circumstances, and the samurai had to be willing to adapt. Horsemen could still easily overcome infantry when out in the open, and one account notes that “the strongest soldiers cannot withstand the bite of arrows, nor can the fastest of men outrun a horse.”⁴⁷ Mounted archers naturally preferred open ground on which to operate, and one reason for the frequent reference to arson in the chronicles was the need to create such an open space artificially. A horseman could then ride around, picking off foot soldiers at will.

Yet at this point in history came the greatest challenge so far to traditional samurai cavalry tactics. Generals realized that one way to use the numerous foot soldiers in their armies was to take away their edged weapons and give them bows to pour volleys of arrows into the enemy, much as the Mongol archers had done. This was the complete antithesis of the notion of the elite mounted archer delivering one arrow with great precision—and, of course, enemy mounted archers provided excellent targets for this new technique. The practice also implies a better organization of foot soldiers and an increase in discipline. If these factors could be achieved, then a general would possess an ordered infantry corps for the first time since the days of the conscript armies. A samurai galloping forward and loosing a few arrows into a mass of disciplined foot archers was unlikely to discourage them, and they would reply with scores of arrows of their own. The Taiheiki refers to these lower-class archers as shashu no ashigaru (“light foot shooters”), the first use in Japanese history of the term ashigaru, a word that was later to be adopted to describe all infantry troops. Out of two thousand men who fought for the Sasaki at the battle of Shijo Nawate in 1348, eight hundred were these “light archers.”⁴⁸ Such mass firing of arrows is implied in the following account that describes what happened when some samurai horse-men of the Hosokawa were trapped on the edge of Lake Biwa and came under fire from men in boats:

They could not pass to the north because they had not finished burning the dwellings of Otsu. A deep lake to the east was likewise impassable, forcing the Hosokawa army to advance in single file along a narrow road. The enemy rowed parallel to the Hosokawa and shot them from the side, killing five hundred in all.⁴⁹

The taking of a victim’s head, from a painted scroll of the Battle of Ichinotani in the Watanabe Museum, Tottori.