The Entire History of Ancient Jap
Five Mongol envoys knelt on the beach at Kamakura and stretched out their necks.
Their time had come and a clear target for the executioner's sword would at least ensure
it was painless.
They gazed out over the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean, waves lapping slowly.
How they wished their final sight could have been an ocean of grass swaying softly in a
step breeze.
Their hearts were calm as the blades descended upon their naked necks.
They would be revenged.
This execution of ambassadors was how Hojo Tokimune, the shikken, head of the Shogun's
government and ruler of Japan, gave his definitive answer to Kublai Khan, Emperor of China, son
of heaven, Great Khan of the Mongols.
He would not submit, not now, not ever.
Mount Fuji's shining peak loomed over the headless Mongol warriors.
Soon after, Kublai sent another five men.
This time there would be no negotiation.
They came to announce one thing.
Invasion.
It would be the biggest seaborne attack the world had ever seen.
These new envoys met the same end, but they were not granted the honor of dying in Mount
Fuji's blessed shadow.
Their blood stained the western beaches where their compatriots had tried to land in Kyushu
a year before.
For the first invasion had come in November 1274.
Great Korean ships replete with Mongol battle regalia and tipped with grotesque figureheads,
still living Japanese islanders from the outlying domains of Tsushima and Iki were nailed, screaming
hideously, to the prows.
The armada stretching to the horizon obscured the waters and made land in Hakata Bay, northern
Kyushu.
Tight ranks of soldiers descended from the ships into the water and marched in formation,
shields held high up onto the beach.
This phalanx warfare was unfamiliar to the defending samurai.
They were confused.
When were they supposed to shout their challenge?
To whom?
How would they know if opponents were of appropriate rank?
One of the defenders made up his mind, lifted his great bow, took aim at a mounted officer
and let fly.
Hojo Tokimune, insecure in his recent tenure, presiding over a crumbling realm beset with
woes, lay in his concubine's lap.
His realm was an ancient one, even if the house of Tokimune were merely backwater warriors
turned recent usurpers of the strings of national power.
The Mongol threat had focused his mind, this the first full-scale invasion his country
had ever known.
And so, for the first time in his young life, he wondered how had Japan got here?
Tokimune became drowsy and slipped into a light sleep.
He dreamed slowly, vividly and fitfully of a Japan, not now as it was, but as it had
been, back into the mists of forgotten time.
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Hereupon, regretting the errors in the old words and wishing to correct the misstatements
in the former chronicles, Her Highness Empress Regnant Genmay, on the 18th day of the ninth
moon of the fourth year of Wado, commanded me, Yasumaro, to select and record the old
words and dutifully to lift them up to her.
I, Yasumaro, with true trembling and true fear, bow my head, bow my head.
Court noble Fudono Yasumaro, Upper Division First Class Fifth Rank Fifth Order of Merit,
paused in his writing, shifted his knees ever so slightly to render his kneeling position
a little more comfortable, dipped his fine brush into the pitch black ink and started
his great endeavor, a work to last for all time.
Yasumaro went on to render the fables, legends and vaguely understood myth of ancient times
as fact, creating a divine fable to legitimize and deify the rule of his very human imperial
masters and the right of his people, the Yamato, to dominate all the other tribes and
peoples of the land we now know as Japan.
He described how Izanagi and Izanami first created the islands, mountains, rivers, herbs
and trees with drops of water from a coral spear.
Then they begat the lord of the universe, the sun goddess Amaterasu, the greatest of
their divine children.
She sent her grandson, Ninigi no Mikado, to earth as the first ruler of the land.
But it was not only Ninigi who descended to earth.
His father, Susanoo, god of storms, uncouth and brash, was banished from heaven for his
foul and evil behavior.
While Susanoo's people conquered and flourished in Izumo in the west of the island of Honshu,
Ninigi's people also prospered and multiplied in the south.
Within three generations, they had grown powerful enough to thrust north to central Honshu,
battling foes to establish a new power base.
Its names were myriad, but most know it as Yamatai.
Yamatai was ruled over by an emperor, Jimmu, the first of a line that was to last forever.
Of course, it was probably not quite as Yasumaro told it.
For Yasumaro to serve a deity, the imperial line required divine blood.
And so, Yasumaro wove the myriad myths of the Yamato people into a solid story, and
in doing so, discovered a royal lineage that stretched back to the sun herself.
The Amaterasu of his story was probably based upon the legendary great third century shaman
queen Himiko.
Yasusano, her brother, and his fight with her may have represented a royal disagreement
as much as a heavenly battle.
His was a work of propaganda, akin to the Roman Aeneid, which wove together vaguely
remembered myth, heroic legend, and outright fabrications to legitimize the rule of Augustus
Caesar in Rome, or the secret history of the Mongols, which did the same for Genghis Khan.
The original settlers of Japan, however, came in a far more human guise.
They first crossed land bridges from the Asian mainland tens of thousands of years before,
and continued to arrive in small groups from all directions for eons afterwards.
The population was small, perhaps 160,000 at its height, and so these people, called
Jomon after the rope patterns they left on their pottery, are thought to have lived a
life of hunting and gathering the plentiful resources they found around them.
They did not know of war until a new people began to make landfall.
These were the people whose myths Yasumaru wrote as fact.
The many-fenced palace of the god of storms was copied across the islands by a new and
acquisitive ambitious people who coveted the land and protected a newly engineered resource,
the rice field.
These are known as the Yayoi people, and Japan would never be the same again.
The ancient Chinese kingdom of Wu, where Shanghai now stands, was believed by the ancient Japanese
to be where their ancestors came from, refugees from that kingdom, which was destroyed around
the time that the Yayoi are believed to have migrated to Japan.
Descriptions of the Wu and the Wa, as the Japanese were originally known in Chinese,
their tattoos and warlike nature certainly seem to bear more than a passing resemblance.
The archaeological and DNA record shows that a large body of the Yayoi period Japanese
came from the north, Siberia, through Mongolia and Manchuria, down the Korean peninsula and
across the seas.
Some modern research also suggests that material and cultural similarities with civilisations
on Java and other parts of Southeast Asia may exist.
What is certain is that the Yayoi people were not the final pre-Japanese history humans
to migrate to the Japanese isles.
Sometime in the first few centuries of the Common Era, a time of turmoil and war on the
continent, a massive wave of people came from northern China, bringing with them material
wealth and knowledge to improve just about every facet of human life on the islands.
Some became nobles, had their names recorded and entered the chronicles.
Place and family names connecting modern Japan with these ancient settlers can be found
to this day, but the exact details of early Japan can still be said to be lost in the
linguistic and cultural mists of time.
Which leaves us with the mystery of just who are the Japanese?
The country formerly had a man as a ruler.
For some 70 or 80 years after that there were disturbances and warfare.
Thereupon, the people agreed upon a woman for their ruler.
Her name was Himiko.
She occupied herself with magic and sorcery, bewitching the people.
Though mature in age, she remained unmarried.
She had a younger brother who assisted her in running the country.
After she became the ruler, there were few who saw her.
She had 1,000 women as attendants, but only one man.
He resided in a palace surrounded by towers and stockades, with armed guards in a constant
state of vigilance.
When Himiko passed away, a great mound was raised, more than 100 paces in diameter.
Over 100 male and female attendants followed her to the grave.
Kofun.
162,000 of these burial mounds have been identified across Japan.
They vary in shape and size, but the classic Kofun is shaped like a keyhole or bell.
The longest is over 400 meters.
The burial chambers are of stone.
Unlooted ones have been found to be adorned with paintings of court life and filled with
useful accessories for the afterlife.
The prehistoric, semi-legendary age recorded in the Chinese classic Sanguo Ji, Record of
the Three Kingdoms, not only told of the enthronement of Queen Himiko, her spinning of spells to
pacify the realm and an influx of people from lands over the seas, it also saw the
dawn of these massive, megalithic engineering projects.
Despite her pure white robe of mulberry fiber, the warm evening and the flaming torches,
a shiver of pure ice rent the girl's heart as she saw the mound, which would be her resting
place.
But she steeled herself.
The Magatama charms which adorned her body rattling while she danced her destiny as a
heavenly lady-in-waiting to her deceased mistress, ruler of Yamatai, Queen of Wa, friend of Wei
Dynasty China, Himiko.
Despite her fear and misgivings, the young girl's heart brimmed with pride to fulfill
this duty.
There never would be another such as her dead queen.
Himiko had woven a spell over Yamatai with Kido magic.
The sorcery had wrought peace where once there had been war, prosperity where once
there had been none.
The people loved her, yet none could set their eyes upon her, even the one thousand maidens
who served her were ignorant of her face.
The queen would admit only one person to her presence, her brother.
This man served her food and wine and communicated laws and judgments to her flock.
Himiko's most astonishing achievement had been sending four diplomatic missions to far
off China with gifts of slaves and the highly prized fine strong cloth for which the queen's
land was justly famous.
In return, treasures, the likes of which had never been seen before, beads, bronze mirrors
and most prized of all, swords, military banners and an official seal pronouncing her friend
and ally of the Wei Dynasty.
Himiko and her chief envoys were symbolically appointed to the highest ranks in the Wei
Chinese military.
Her magic had extended across the oceans and bewitched the Chinese ruler into giving her
his greatest honor.
With China's recognition, all bowed before her and Yamatai came to dominate the Japanese
islands.
But as is the way of things, the great queen breathed her last and the people of Yamatai
raised a great mound, a kofun, over her burial chamber.
One hundred youths and maidens were selected to serve her until the end of time and the
young girl shivering in the summer evening heat was one.
She danced on past the crackling flames into the kofun mound and on to the eternal afterlife.
Himiko and her serving maidens are believed to be at eternal peace at the Hashihaka Kofun
in Nara Prefecture.
Assassination and murder followed.
More than one thousand were thus slain.
A relative of Himiko named Eo, a girl of thirteen, was then made queen and order was restored.
Zhang, an ambassador from Wei, issued a proclamation to the effect that Eo was the ruler.
This set a pattern in Japan.
Throughout ancient times, women's status was high and female monarchs repeatedly enter
the chronicles.
Some like Empress Jingu beat the drums of war.
Others seem to have followed Himiko and Eo in fostering a land at peace with itself.
This doctrine is amongst all the doctrines the most excellent, but it is hard to explain
and hard to comprehend.
Even the Duke of Zhou and Confucius could not attain a knowledge of it.
This doctrine can create religious merit and retribution without measure and without bounds
and so lead on to a full appreciation of the highest wisdom.
Every prayer is fulfilled and nought is wanting.
The people who made the Japanese islands their home did not forget about the lands their
ancestors had come from, nor about the gods of those lands which they brought with them
to become the gods of the religion we now know as Shinto.
Long before the myths of Amaterasu and her descendants were written, Shinto was a living,
breathing religion of nature spirits.
Mountains, rivers, trees, stones, fire and water.
But the small kingdoms of the Japanese isles had remained intimately connected to those
on the Korean peninsula, trading, exchanging, learning, marrying and warring.
Embassies were exchanged, noble and royal marriage alliances forged, technology transferred
and missionaries sent.
There was a relationship of deep respect.
And so, in the middle of the 6th century, when King Sung of Baekje, a kingdom in the
western part of the peninsula, sent his letter sharing the peace of the Buddha with Emperor
Kinmei, his Imperial Highness' chief advisor, Soga Noaname, stroked his beard and smiled
behind a ceremonial fan.
His time had come at last.
The long years of scheming with his Korean kin and continental-minded allies in the Yamato
court had resulted at last in this mission's arrival.
It seemed sudden, heaven-sent, but it was nothing of the sort.
Soga and his family had spent years, perhaps even decades, arranging it all.
This was not the first time Buddha's teachings had reached Japan.
A number of the common people had been preached to by monks in generations past, some of the
holy men even claiming to have come from as far away as the land of the Buddha's birth.
But such common, barefoot migrant priests received no patronage and even less aristocratic
interest.
Soga Noaname's family had been aware, perhaps even secret followers, of the teachings for
generations.
He knew both that Buddhism was salvation for his sovereign and a way of concentrating power
in his own hands.
He would be the first noble of consequence to take up Buddha's banner.
He and his clan would hold it aloft in battle, claiming the divine power to smite and confound
their foes.
But nature, or maybe the old Shinto gods, it seemed did not agree with Soga's new religion.
Plague broke out and Soga's enemy at court seized upon this as proof that the true gods
of the land were insulted.
And Emperor Kinmei, in a fearful rage and in mortal fear for his life and kingdom, ordered
Buddhist temples destroyed.
It would be left to Soga Noaname's descendants to reclaim the Buddhist mandate.
The army of the imperial princes and the troops of the ministers were timid and afraid and
fell back three times.
At this, the imperial prince Shotoku, his hair being tied on his temples, followed in
the rear of the army.
He pondered in his own mind, saying to himself, without prayer we cannot succeed.
So he cut down a tree and swiftly fashioned images of the four heavenly kings.
Placing them on his topknot, he uttered a vow.
If we are now made to gain the victory over the enemy, I promise faithfully to honor the
four heavenly kings, guardians of the world, by erecting to them a temple with a pagoda.
And so, Prince Shotoku swept to victory.
When he was appointed head of government under his aunt, Japan's first and longest reigning
female empress regnant Suiko, he made Buddhism the state religion.
Together they established temples, sent embassies to Sui China, established a calendar to understand
the heavens and a constitution to enshrine both Buddhism and Chinese Confucian order
as the guiding principles of life, at least for aristocrats in the new nation, which was
to become generally known by a term he is said to have invented, the land of the rising
sun, Nihon, or Japan.
From the chaos and tribal infighting of the 5th century, Shotoku and Suiko established
the roots of a stable state, which would in time come to dominate the three main islands,
Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku, and impose semi-vassal status on the wild tribes of the north and
the tattooed Amami island peoples of the far south.
Future religious and secular leaders would claim that he came to them in visions and
dreams, inspiring them to great deeds and profound spiritual understanding.
In his vision, his accomplishments, and the recognition granted him down the ages, Prince
Shotoku can justly claim to be the father of the nation we now know.
As Japan.
The farm boy stood in a simple tunic, rusty knife in his belt, a tall spear at his side.
He was feeling strong.
The gathering cold of late autumn didn't bother him one bit.
Instead, the blue sky gave him hope and strength.
The conscript reflected on the fact that he was a peasant no more.
He was now a great warrior for his lord and king.
He watched excitedly as the eagerly anticipated great flotilla of ships entered the mouth
of the Benguma river on the east coast of Korea.
Tens of thousands of men bent to the oars, chanting in unison as the small vessels, which
had successfully made the treacherous crossing from Kyushu, made their way up the river.
Astride each ship stood proud warriors, clan banners held high, swords punching the air
amid deafening cheers.
Drums rang out.
They were late in the season and had been lucky not to get caught in the autumn storms,
but it mattered not.
They were now here.
Baekje, the kingdom from which Buddha's peace had entered Japan, was an ancient Japanese
ally on the Korean peninsula, but had fallen to an alliance of Tang China and another Korean
kingdom, Silla, in 660.
Following that defeat, those who could fled to Japan to plan their comeback with the help
of the Japanese.
This vast army and armada of boats was the result.
It was a moment of pure joy for the young conscript as he stood on the riverbank ready
to welcome the Japanese reinforcements and the returning Baekje refugees and above all,
his rightful lord, the new king, Pungjang.
This king would stamp the seal of peace on their lives and coat it with the blood of
the wretched oppressors.
The river was filling up.
It had become almost impossible to see the water flowing beneath the sleek vessels that
were so numerous.
Eight hundred, his commander had told him.
All the conscript knew that was with such a host they were sure of victory.
Everyone was in good spirits.
The moment for revenge had arrived.
It was October 4th, 663.
The motherland was on the cusp of being restored to its former glory.
The flotilla got larger and larger as more and more ships entered the estuary and started
to head upstream.
But there came a point when they were so jammed together that movement all but ceased.
This was the moment the hidden Tang Chinese ships had been waiting for.
One hundred and seventy of them sprung the trap, speeding downriver from inland harbors,
raining flaming arrows down on the unprepared Japanese and Baekje Korean vessels.
The young conscript watched in horror as his kingdom's salvation floundered and died before
his eyes.
Then, from the hills behind him came the sound of shouts.
A conch shell rang high, then low.
The order for cavalry to form up.
Hwarang, Silla's renowned cavalry, trained by warrior monks from childhood to revere
the law, obey all orders, to love and fight for the death of their comrades and to exterminate
their foes.
They were said to sooner die than retreat.
The young Baekje conscript now saw himself for what he was.
No great warrior.
A mere mountain peasant, dressed in hemp clothing, armed only with a simple spear.
It was now he knew fear in his heart.
Behind Baekje's dwindling forces, the Tang ship had closed in and hand-to-hand fighting
covered the floating battlefield.
Surviving Japanese warriors from sunken ships climbed the muddy riverbanks and joined the
rear of the conscript's formation.
There was nowhere to run from the circling Hwarang.
The only hope was the ever smaller mass of men around their king.
Then they broke.
The few remaining men headed for the safety of the hills as the Hwarang swarmed around
them, impaling the fleeing runners on razor-sharp lances.
They held out, fighting a low-key guerrilla war for years in the mountains.
But after a decade, the dwindling band of freedom fighters knew that all was truly lost.
There was to be no Baekje resurrection.
Japanese ships again made the dangerous voyage to the continental peninsula to perform the
evacuation of their Korean allies and kin.
The minister Yeo Jasin, the minister Gwisil Jipsa and others, men and women to the number
of over 700 persons, were removed and settled in the district of Gamafu in the province
of Omi.
As Baekje fell, all those who could, perhaps many thousands in all, escaped to the Japanese
islands with the retreating Japanese troops and in the decades following, they were welcomed
and integrated into society and national political systems.
Their traces survive to this day in place names, culture and family surnames.
This was a pivotal moment for Japan.
No longer would it be intimately entwined with the continent.
From now on, it would turn inwards, concentrating on its own affairs, staying well away from
continental politics and conflicts.
Silla, who soon conquered the whole peninsula, never forgot that the Japanese had supported
their Baekje enemies.
The relationship between the Japanese isles and the Koreas had soured, never to regain
its former warmth.
In ancient times, the kings of the Yin Dynasty restored their country after transferring
the capital five times.
The sovereigns of the Zhou Dynasty ensured peace in their country after establishing
the capital three times.
Today, as for the site of Heijokyo, the layout of the four animals is in accord with the
model.
Mountains guard the site in three directions and the divinations suggest good fortune.
We should build a new capital at this site.
Materials for construction as the need arises should be listed and reported.
Plans should be carefully worked out so that they would not be changed subsequently.
Bodhisenna had travelled the world, over icebound mountains, through parched desert, across
lush farmland and upon the deepest seas in his quest to find Manjusri, a long-dead enlightened
one, a Bodhisattva of wisdom, who appeared to him in a dream as a youth in India.
It had taken him years, but now he was reaching his journey's end.
Gyoki, the Japanese monk who walked beside him, was Manjusri reincarnated.
He was sure of it.
They had met before in another time and place, another life, in the presence of the Buddha
himself.
Gyoki solemnly led Bodhisenna onto his, their destiny, the great city of Heijokyo, Japan's
new capital.
Nothing like this had been seen before.
The land had been unified.
No longer was it merely the state lot of Yamato, it was now the land of the rising sun, Japan.
It was no longer appropriate or dignified for the court to up sticks and be loaded onto
the back of ox wagons every few years.
China had long ago built an established capital.
It was high time that Japan should join the civilized world in this matter, just as it
had so many other ways over the centuries.
Foreign states needed to understand the full dignity and civilization of the city's inhabitants
and its rulers, needed to know where to send diplomatic missions and tribute, and what
is more, heaven needed to know where human power lay on earth.
Moving had surely confused the gods, caused them to look less favorably on the realm.
The time had come.
On the day of Jaji in the eleventh month, the cabinet offered a proposal to the emperor
as follows.
We hear that in ancient times, lives were so simple that people lived in caves in winter
and nests in summer.
In recent years, the noble people live in palaces instead.
We also have the capital for the residence of the emperor.
Since the capital is visited by people from remote provinces and foreign countries, how
can we express the virtue of the emperor if the capital lacks magnificence?
We offer a proposal to decree that the authorities should instruct noblemen and wealthy commoners
to equip their houses with tiled roofs, vermilion pillars, and white walls.
Heijokyo was the answer to all these problems, desires, and prayers.
A city of a hundred thousand, nobles, commoners, and slaves alike walked within its numerous
precincts.
Peasants delivered food and other supplies from the hinterland.
Pretty girls arrived to make their fortune in the pleasure districts.
Criminals slunk by in the shadows, hoping to grab a tiny slither of the glorious riches
for themselves.
Imperial counselors and civil servants also came from much further afield, from as far
away as Persia, a land lost in the haze of the vast sand and grass desert which was known
to exist beyond China.
Chinese scholars, merchants, engineers, and architects from Great Tang roamed the streets
and haunted the halls of learning in their flowing robes, sporting their long status-marking
nails.
Work with one's hands and fingers was left to the mere illiterate peasants and the servile
classes.
A grand imperial repository called Shosuin was established to exemplify the permanence
of the new city.
The royal treasures, tribute and gifts from neighboring states, some emanating from further
even than the most exotic of inhabitants, the extreme wilds of lands in the far west
whose names were unknown, would no longer be subject to rude upheaval.
They would rest in peace, as symbols of imperial legitimacy, international recognition, and
power in the sacrosanct precincts of the brand new Todai-ji Temple.
But Shotoku's reforms had woven their logical path to this point.
The loss of allies and bases on the continent, no longer a buffer zone, had led to this point.
Japan's establishment as a state had led to this point.
Of all the people who roamed the wide boulevards of the new capital, Borisenna truly stood
out.
He was by far the darkest-skinned and perhaps close to one of the most learned men to have
ever walked the winding mountain roads of Japan.
A Tamil man from the deep south of what is now southern India, he had traveled the world
seeking Buddhist truth and his search had eventually ended here.
He was only in his twenties.
The imperial court was thrilled to have a guest from lands so close to those of Buddha's
birth and granted Borisenna land for a temple, encouraging him to share his deep knowledge
and saintly aura.
However, Borisenna did not simply settle for a quiet temple life.
He was granted the honor of putting the final touch to the greatest devotional work of construction
that Japan and most of the world had ever seen.
In 741, Emperor Shomu, desiring to show the magnificence of his state, demonstrate the
protection of the Buddha's universal order and having heard that Tang China had already
completed such a project, ordered the erecting of a great Buddha statue in Heijokyo.
It was to be the centerpiece of a great institution of religion and learning.
Sixteen meters high, five hundred tons cast entirely of bronze and housed in a great wooden
temple hall, fifty by eighty-six meters, with eighty-four massive cypress pillars.
For Daiji, the world had never seen the like in wood before nor would ever again.
Half of the population, around 2.6 million people, donated food, money or labor to the
cause and specialist craftsmen hired from throughout the known world toiled for over
a decade to realize this imperial dream.
In 752, it was time for the final act, the eye-opening ceremony, to dedicate the statue
to awaken the living Buddha within.
Before dignitaries from Tang China, all the Korean kingdoms, ten thousand guests and four
thousand dancers, moving to the dignified and majestic sounds of Hichiriki oboes, fue
flutes, koto, biwa lutes and myriad drums which formed the new imperial music brought
by Bodhisanna, the Tamil priest himself painted the Buddha's eyes.
It must have been a profound moment of holiness and spirituality.
With the painting of his eye, the Buddha lived in Nara, in Japan.
The great Buddha's love and protection now emanated from the Japanese capital city to
warm and protect the world with its light and sanctity.
The brush Bodhisanna used is still preserved in the treasury today.
It took several decades for the luster to wear off.
For while the munificence of the great statue undoubtedly protected the realm's spiritual
health, the financial and social cost took a long-term toil.
Furthermore, the great centers of learning became great centers of Buddhist power and
influence over the state.
This was not how the new Emperor Kamo saw his reign's future when he ascended the throne
in 781 and became determined to break from this monster of religious control created
by his predecessors.
There was only one thing for it.
The eternal capital of Hejo-kyo would have to be moved.
The Buddhists could be left to twiddle their thumbs and chant their sutras away from secular
power.
Nagaoka was the site chosen in 784, but it was not a success.
A decade later, in 794, Hejo-kyo was eventually founded and over the next decades blossomed
into a glorious and fitting capital city to truly rule the land in harmony.
This new city grew in size with the building of the vast, sprawling mansions of the 1,182
noble families of the land, a third who traced their lineage to Chinese and Korean families,
a testament to the global draw of the polity which had been built over the last two centuries
in central Japan.
The economy thrived and the libraries became the world's envy, with over 1,500 Chinese
classics available for the reference of ministers, scholars, engineers, craftspeople and soothsayers.
Over the next few hundred years, Chinese book collectors even visited to copy volumes of
ancient literature that had been lost in China itself.
Kyoto, as it later became, was to remain the imperial capital until 1869, but it was on
Japan's borders where the real battles were being held.
Emishi from the two provinces of Matsu and Echigo, their wild hearts as yet untamed,
have repeatedly harmed our imperial subjects.
Accordingly, we have dispatched an officer and have ordered the provinces to mobilize
their regiments.
They are to go forth and punish the Emishi.
The villages of sturdy wooden huts were small, but warm and secure.
Nestled in the cozy confines of tree-bound valleys, they were virtually hidden until
you stumbled upon them.
The villagers, called Emishi by their would-be invaders from the south, led hard but hardy
lives, hunting, trapping, gathering and reaping the grains of their half-wild paddy fields.
Food was plentiful, the gods and spirits of their northern mountains and forests provided
abundant resources of every kind.
And so why then should they bow to foreigners, pay the fruits of their labor to men and women
who lived in far-off palaces?
What would the foreigners give them in exchange for this?
What more could they need?
These people controlled their own destiny, paid tribute to no one, acknowledged no overlord
but their own chiefs.
Amongst the eastern savages, the Emishi are the most powerful.
Their men and women live together promiscuously, there is no distinction of father and child.
In winter they dwell in holes, in summer they live in nests.
Their clothing consists of furs and they drink blood.
In ascending mountains they are like flying birds, in going through the grass they are
like flea wolves.
What we now think of as Japan was not always Japan.
In fact, the remote borders in the north, the west and south are still unfixed and disputed
to this day.
In the 8th and 9th century, the wild border was far closer to the capital, so close in
fact that even the marches to the north of what is now Tokyo were hazy no-man's land,
a vague realm of independent and warlike peoples known as Emishi.
The ancient Japanese court did not engage in anthropological study to determine exactly
who these people were, simply classing these unsubjugated, free peoples as barbarians.
But modern research has led us to believe that they were farmers and hunters of mixed
ethnicity, composed of people similar to those who had settled in the south, but perhaps
with a stronger dose of blood from the people we now know as the Ainu of modern-day Japan's
extreme north.
Periodically, tribes of these Emishi people bowed to their powerful southern neighbours,
begged admittance to the tax roll and were resettled within the burgeoning Japanese imperium.
Whether this resettlement resembled the relatively peaceful settlement of Goths and other non-subject
tribes as farmers in Roman territory or represented something more sinister is unclear, but it
is thought that at least some of the settlers were captive women and children, who still
resisting husbands and fathers were then enticed to surrender and join them in exile.
However, in the main, the north remained beyond the pale, and the court at Heijokyo decided
that something must be done about it.
In the early 8th century, several punitive expeditions consisting mainly of infantry
conscripts set out, but the skill of the enemy horsemen, cumbersome supply lines and deep
winter snows meant little was achieved.
And so, in 774, the emperor decided to do something more definitive.
He declared the commencement of the Great Pacification Era.
Because military action brings hardship to the people, we have long valued the broad
virtue that embraces the myriad things and have eschewed war.
But a report from our generals makes it clear that the barbarians have not amended their
wild hearts.
They invade our frontiers and ignore the instructions of the sovereign.
What must be done cannot be avoided.
The Heijokyo court were conscripts, mainly from provinces adjoining the barbarian territories.
Non-professional peasants serving as part of their tax duty, providing their own weapons
and armour, and not expecting to be in the field for long.
Those who commanded them were chosen for their noble titles as much as their leadership prowess.
The Emishi, despite their own recorded testimony being lost to time, seem to have been warriors
born and despite their numerical and equipmental inferiority, could, as with the Viet Minh
and Vietnam, attack swiftly from nowhere before melting back into the dense, dark forests
of their homeland.
While the huge Yamato armies did score some wins, in the main they stumbled around in
territory they didn't know, losing men to ambush, getting hungrier and hungrier as their
supply lines grew ever longer.
An age-old story.
The Emishi chieftain Aterui sat atop his fleet horse, his bow as yet unstrung.
It was the fifth month of 789.
He gazed at the vast enemy force arrayed before him in the valley.
Behind the marching Yamato troops sent by Emperor Kamu smoked 800 of his people's homes,
raised as the slow-moving infantry progressed towards their doom, because the flaming homes
had been sacrificed to a grand plan.
An elaborate trap.
This advance guard had been lured over the Koromo River by easy pickings and the promise
of a seemingly small and easily-defeatable Emishi skirmish force of a mere few hundred.
The Emishi had stood their ground at first, let the attackers think it was the main force
earnestly defending their homes.
They then feigned retreat, withdrawing while keeping up a running battle with the 4,000
Yamato troops.
The invaders' plan was for the remainder of the massive invasion force, nearly 50,000
men, to cross the river now, with no Emishi defenders to threaten and thwart their passage.
But now was Aterui's moment.
He and his thousand warriors sounded their battle cry.
Blood-curdling roars echoed throughout the hills and thickly-treed valleys, magnifying
their volume to a storm.
The trampling army below them on the valley floor hesitated.
A sharp intake of breath sounded, and a proud, Chinese-style war banner drooped slightly
as its bearer looked around, spooked and afraid.
Then Aterui sounded his conch horn.
It rang through the valleys and hills of his homeland.
The cavalry started slowly down the forested mountain, as yet the enemy could not see them.
They could simply hear the cries and shouts of a large host approaching fast.
The men on the valley floor's imaginations ran wild.
It seemed as if a great horde of riders was bearing down upon them.
It was too much.
They broke and ran, trampling their once-proud war banners beneath their freezing, sandaled
feet.
Those that managed to reach the river began to wade outwards, towards the safety of the
far bank and the troops yet to cross.
But these were treacherous waters.
They flowed fast.
Over a thousand men succumbed to the depths.
A thousand two hundred and fifty more survived only by discarding their weapons, a sacrifice
to the goddess of this forsaken northern waterway.
The army did not attempt another crossing.
The commander Kino Kosami issued this report to the emperor.
My staff and I have discussed this, and concluded that our best course is to disband the army,
return the provisions, and prepare for emergencies.
Thus we have sent orders to the various armies to disband and withdraw.
More campaigns followed, but in the face of mounting opposition among the population,
it was clear that something had to change.
And so, after the death of Emperor Kamu, who had invested so much time and energy in this
great pacification, the court came up with a cunning plan.
In 811, victory was declared.
Nothing had changed.
The Emishi simply continued their wild and free ways in the way they saw fit.
It would be another four hundred years before the north was fully integrated into Japan,
and it would be cultural assimilation rather than conquest.
However, for now, a conch shell of freedom rang through the mountains and valleys of
the Emishi's northern homeland.
A Western Hoorie beckons with her white hand, inviting the stranger to intoxicate himself
with her white hand.
That Western Hoorie with features like a flower.
She stands by the wine warmer and laughs with the breath of spring, laughs with the breath
of spring, dances with the dress of gauze.
Will you be going somewhere, milord, now, before you are drunk?
The young embassy member, Abe no Nakamaro, had caught a glimpse of the girl with the
golden hair in the crowd as the Japanese embassy paraded into the Tang Chinese capital of Chang'an
through the great eastern gate of the city and proceeded to the diplomatic quarters where
they would be accommodated during their stay in the Chinese capital.
It had been a grueling odyssey from Heijo Kyo in that year of 717.
The thought of setting sail from the port of Naniwa with his mother's farewell poem
ringing in his ears brought tears even now, thousands of miles away, at journey's end.
Of the four ships that set sail, only two had made it across the raging seas south of
Kyushu.
He knew that former missions had sailed a safer route via Korea, but Baekje's fall and
Silla's belligerence had put a stop to that.
Once in China, though, a thing of true wonder had revealed itself, the road and relay station
network which stretched unhindered to the farthest borders of the realm with standardized
systems and in great order.
In China, all roads led to the capital, Chang'an.
The embassy had ridden in official carriages as guests of state, crossing great rivers
on stone bridges or regular river-worthy ferries, staying each night in comfortable
relay stations and contemplating the vastness of the countryside as the oxen plodded their
weary way on the hard road.
And now the young embassy member was here, in the center of the world, a city of more
than one million from all corners of the earth inside the awe-inspiring fortifications, and
yet all he could think of was the revealing dress of gauze, the curve of the body revealed
beneath, and the outlandish yet oh-so-enticing hair like fine golden strands woven through
silken cloth.
He wondered what type of barbarian she was, whether she had come from the end of the world
as he had.
He knew that he would be spending months, perhaps years, as a guest of the government
In special facilities afforded little movement, a gilded confinement, but he would somehow
evade the guard to stroke those long golden locks and discover what lay beneath the gauze
dress.
This truly was a city of wonders.
He would discover the world in Chang'an and return to Heizhouqiu to recount stories of
his epic adventures.
Of that he was certain.
Between 607 and 839 AD, 21 missions were dispatched to China.
The first mission infuriated the Chinese emperor and nearly led to war by insinuating that
the two nations were equal.
The heavenly sovereign of the east respectfully addresses the emperor of the west.
However, his forces were indisposed at the time, engaged in trying to dominate the northern
Korean kingdom of Goguryeo, and he settled for a polite but haughty letter to be delivered
to place the mere sovereign of this barbarian nation below himself, the son of heaven.
The emperor greets the sovereign of Yamato.
Your chief envoy has come and stated in detail your good intentions.
We have been graced with reception of the heavenly mandate to rule the universe and
will extend the influence of our virtue to all beings.
In our concern to nurture and edify the people, we do not distinguish between near and far.
I have heard that the sovereign resides beyond the sea and treats his people with benevolence,
that peace reigns within his country, that people's customs are harmonious and that they
are of an honest nature.
You have come from afar to bring tribute.
We are delighted with this splendid demonstration of your sincerity.
The chief envoy, Ono Naomi Imoko, reported that Sui China was an admirable country whose
laws are complete and fixed, and set the scene for the next two centuries of exchange, during
which Japan acquired knowledge of religion, laws, technology, cuisine, agriculture, industry,
culture, fine Chinese manufactures, and perhaps most importantly, respect on the world stage
and senior rank in the hierarchy of nations.
It, however, had to grit its teeth and accept the barbarian status which the Chinese bestowed.
In the end, Abe no Nakamaru never did return home, dying in Chang'an aged 72 and 770.
To this day, he remains deeply respected, a symbol of peace and mutual friendship in
both China and Japan.
When I look up into the vast sky tonight, is it the same moon that I saw rising from
behind Mount Mikasa at Kasuga Shrine all those years ago?
In the breeze scatter soft snow flurries, so brief that it's intermittent.
Fall is sad, indeed.
It was the end of the 10th century, a time of weak central rule and chaos in the countryside.
Indeed for the past century or more, the entire world had been in turmoil.
The Vikings were ravaging Europe, the Mayan kingdoms and Central America were in swift
decline.
China was divided by conflict and epidemics raged throughout the globe.
In Japan, conflict with Silla on the Korean peninsula and the danger of travel in war-torn
China had meant that the once glorious diplomatic missions had ceased.
Immigration similarly dried up, trade faltered and the all-important intellectual exchange,
on which earlier development had been based, faded into distant memory.
The court lost control of the provinces and retreated within itself.
Despite this calamity, however, a great flowering of culture was occurring in the now almost
ancient 200-year-old capital, Kyoto.
Great volumes of poetry were declaimed for posterity, gorgeous clothing recorded in immortal
artworks, music and dance of great sophistication composed to be handed down the generations
for a thousand years.
And perhaps most wonderful of all, a great literary tradition came into being.
The world's first ever novel, Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, was written in serial form
in the early 11th century and other women, especially those of the court, brushed their
witticisms and ironic reflections into diaries, which are still enjoyed to this day.
Prime among these female authors, somewhat akin to trend-setting celebrity influencers
of our modern world, was Sei Shonagon.
Fine, then, how to be hard-hearted from me you have learned, but to promise, then not
come.
Who taught you that, I wonder?
As far as Sei was concerned, the common people were little better than worms.
One occasionally caught a glimpse of them as one travelled through a village, their
clothes threadbare, unperfumed and untrammelled by colour of rank, their children naked and
gaping.
Once she had seen a small boy, no doubt abandoned by his commoner mother, much as animals leave
their young to fend for themselves, standing and gaping at her from the side of the road.
He did not move, simply stared at her carriage the whole time, gawping.
Could anything have been more rude?
Sei Shonagon, lady-in-waiting, court-chronicler, diarist and social commentator, had reflected
on this and other events.
As far as the courtier was concerned, it all went to show just why the court should be
kept apart as far as possible from what lay without.
She had even heard that the common people mated without even attempting poetic courting
first.
The noble lady simply imagined it to be a free-for-all in their hovels.
The males did exhibit a modicum of decency by living with their lover's parents and
their begotten offspring, at least until they had had enough and wandered elsewhere or succumbed
to one of the diseases which were of course rampant among the servile masses.
Perhaps most astonishingly, however, the females fed offspring with milk from their own breasts,
not even having the wherewithal to hire a team of wet nurses to suckle their young.
Sei herself, who had left a good-for-nothing husband behind when she entered court, had
a more refined approach to woo or reject her many lovers and courtiers.
Exchanges of poetry, perfumed letters, half-feigned modesty, well-planned coquettishness, and
the disposal and scorning of favours calculated at just the right moment.
But even Sei, the master of the game of love, did not always get it right.
To be abandoned is my fate, I know so well.
Uncomprehending do my tears fall.
The razor-sharp sword slashed downwards towards the unmounted warrior's neck.
To finish the job, the rider grabbed the unhelmeted head by its hair and twisted, pulling the
head from its body.
The victorious killer threw away the prize as if it was nothing and galloped proudly
away.
As she rode off the field of war into the distant mountains, Tomoe Gozen removed her
helmet and shook her long jet-black hair free.
It billowed in the wind behind her like a battle standard, announcing to all that one
of history's greatest women warriors had fought her last battle and fought it well.
While Sei Shonagon and her noble kin lived their closeted existence in Kyoto, over in
the East, events that would have repercussions reaching to the modern age were evolving.
A class of clans, connected by hereditary service to a military commander, were emerging.
As they served only one lord, they became known by a word which means to serve.
Samurai.
Within a hundred years, in the 11th century, at around the same time as the age of chivalry
was dawning in Europe, powerful samurai warrior clans were exerting great control over the
imperial court.
One in particular, the Taira, seemed to be in the ascendancy and the leader of the clan,
Kiyomori, managed to have his three-year-old grandson installed on the Chrysanthemum throne
as Emperor Antoku.
All seemed to be going very well.
In the East, Taira's ancient foe, who had been thought vanquished, the Minamoto clan,
led by Yoritomo, raised a host and marched west.
When the Taira generals perceived their resurrected foe's strength, they retreated swiftly back
to Kyoto without engaging.
The next few years saw the Eastern North fall to Minamoto forces, while the Taira lands
suffered natural disaster, famine and pestilence.
However, they remained undefeated and safe in their Kyoto base, biding their time to
strike.
And in 1184, the Taira felt their time had come.
A huge force of 100,000 was levied and the men of the capital region made a leisurely
progress north to combat the Minamoto in their mountain lairs.
On June 2nd, 1184, battle was joined at Kurikara.
It took place in the old, honorable samurai fashion.
Melees were fought between picked champions, warriors called out their lineage before engaging
and all the proper protocols were observed.
Until night fell.
The heavily outnumbered Minamoto sent flaming bulls, enraged and in mortal panic, running
through the Taira troops.
In the chaos, the camp was abandoned and it is said, thus did 70,000 horsemen of the Taira
perish.
Buried in this one deep valley, the mountain streams ran with their blood and the mound
of their corpses was like a small hill.
The Taira fled Kyoto, taking the young Emperor Antoku, his treasury, the imperial regalia
and anything else they could grab.
They fled still further west until they could flee no more.
Final battle was enjoined at a place called Danno-ura.
The fighting took place with ships' decks forming a treacherous, swaying battlefield.
One wrong step and heavily armored warriors, unused to fighting on the sea, would fall
to watery deaths.
Emperor Antoku, still just six years old, was placed on an insignificant looking boat
so that while the Minamoto concentrated their arrow fire on the flagship, he remained safe.
But a traitor, Taguchi Shigeyoshi, defected and revealed the ruse.
The battle was reigned down on the rough-hewn boat which formed the last few feet of Emperor
Antoku's once glorious realm.
As the Taira realized there was no further to flee, the Emperor's grandmother held him
in her arms.
Finally she jumped.
In the depths of the ocean, we have a capital.
The Taira were destroyed for all time.
Minamoto Yoritomo was granted the title of Shogun and his warrior-ruled samurai administration
swiftly removed political power from Kyoto's hands.
Henceforth, true power would be wielded from Kamakura in the east.
Samurai power, largely based in the east at Kamakura and later Edo, would last 700 years
until 1868 when the last Shogun resigned and the Emperor also moved east from Kyoto to
his new capital of Tokyo.
Monks and priests today are fawning and devious and they confuse the people and lead them
astray.
Not a single person in the entire population will possess a heart of goodness.
There will be nothing but binding and enslaving, killing and injuring, anger and contention.
Pestilence will become rampant, comets will appear again and again, two suns will come
forth side by side and eclipses will occur with unaccustomed frequency.
Black arcs and white arcs will span the sky as harbingers of ill fortune.
Stars will fall, the earth will shake and noise will issue from the wells.
Torrential rains and violent winds will come out of season, famine will constantly occur
and grains and fruits will not ripen.
Marauders from many other regions will invade and plunder the nation.
The people will suffer all manner of pain and affliction and no place will exist where
one may live in safety.
The priest Nichiren placed down his pen, knelt on the hard earthen floor of his hut and gazed
through the open door down his green pine-coloured valley.
He had said his peace.
Rulers do not generally like to be told they are evil and mistaken, especially young rash
ones who live in fear of invasions predicted by raving holier-than-thou priests.
Rival priests with the ruler's ear do not like to be described as fawning and devious,
and no one likes to think that marauders from beyond the sea will appear over the horizon
to slaughter the men, take the women and enslave the children.
And so Nichiren was condemned to death and dragged out of town to the execution grounds
at Katase.
In the dark of night he frantically threw his holy vestments on the branch of a tree
to avoid them being soiled by his blood.
The calm sea shimmered in the light of the moon and soft waves bathed the beach with
their gentle ebb and flow.
As the executioner's sword hovered above his neck, awaiting the order to strike, Nichiren
raised his face and despite himself, he swiftly composed a prayer to the god of the moon.
Suddenly the sky was rent in two by a brilliant light.
Nichiren heard the dull yet sonorous sound as the sword fell from his would-be killer's
grasp and the patter of running feet on the sandy beach.
The execution corps fled.
Soon the holy man was alone with the sea, the stars and the moon, his saviour.
The priest let two handfuls of sand seep slowly through his fingers, got slowly to his feet,
walked up to where the grass met the sand, retrieved his vestments from the beach where
they still hung and then sank to the ground once more.
The divine being had vouched for his virtuosity, saved him from death to continue his mission
on earth.
And Nichiren was right.
After the relative stability of the shogunate's early years, environmental catastrophe, natural
disasters and weakening government were leading to social breakdown, starvation and appeared
to be ushering in the end of days.
But all of that was nothing.
As Nichiren had predicted, the horsemen of the apocalypse were about to descend on the
Japanese isles.
Mongols.
We by the grace and decree of heaven, emperor of great Mongolia present a letter to the
king of Japan.
We have pondered that from ancient times even the princes of small states have striven to
cultivate friendly intercourse with those of adjoining territories.
We beg that hereafter you, oh king, will establish friendly relations with us so that the sages
may make the four seas their home.
Is it reasonable to refuse intercourse with each other?
It will lead to war and who is there who likes such a state of things?
Think on this, oh king.
The first letter had arrived in 1266.
Ignoring these communications and general ignorance in Japan of just how powerful and
large the Mongol empire was, which stretched from Manchuria to Poland, led to Mongol troops
storming through the surf at Hakata Bay in 1274.
The defender's arrow flew shore.
The Mongol toppled from his horse and waves closed around him.
Then the enemy paused.
As one, the men in the rear ranks raised strange-looking short bows.
A great wave of arrows darkened the sky and shieldless as was their way, the defending
samurai fell in droves.
Suddenly thunder roared a short way off, not in the clear pale autumn sky, but on the ground.
Blood and flesh of samurai flew everywhere.
Then the thunder pealed again and again.
These Mongol devils seemed somehow to have enlisted the very heavens to fight on their
side.
The samurai turned and fled.
They would fight men to the death, but dueling with deities was a very different proposition.
The enemy advanced up to the wet beach slowly, letting loose wave after wave of arrows and
propelling their grenade-like bombs asunder.
The samurai continued a fighting retreat throughout that terrible day.
But the enemy came on, unstoppable, invincible, burning, pillaging, killing.
Night fell and in the morning they were gone.
By the time news of the landing reached the young shogun Hojo Tokimune on the other side
of the country, a heaven-sent typhoon had consigned many of the enemy's ships to the
bottom of the ocean and the rest scuttling for the safety of Korean harbours.
Japan had been lucky this time.
No one knew why, but after that first day of battle on Kyushu, the enemy had returned
to their great ships and sailed away.
Perhaps they were looking for an easier landing place, maybe it had only been a reconnaissance
mission.
Either way, the typhoon had put paid to whatever devilry they had kept in store.
Everybody knew they would return and so Shiken Hojo Tokimune ordered a frenzy of defensive
measures.
All along the eastern coast walls were to be built, lookouts to be permanently posted,
troop numbers multiplied, even weapons to be redesigned to counter this new threat.
Kublai smashed his fist into the floor.
These snakes, these worms, these dwarvish barbarians of the east.
They had performed relatively well against one puny reconnaissance mission in the previous
year and now they thought they could behead his peace envoys with impunity.
No action could be more heinous.
Greater nations had been pulverized, entire cities put to the sword for less.
They would pay dearly.
A people should know when they've met their match.
Kublai's generals, flush from having reunited China under his rule with their recent victory
over the southern provinces, now turned their faces eastwards.
Lacking knowledge of the sea and remembering the storms that had plagued the first exploratory
expedition in 1274, they turned to two Yangtze river pirates, named Juching and Zhengxian
for their expertise.
Two fleets would sail for Japan, one of 900 ships from Korea and another of 3,500 ships
from southern China.
They would carry 142,000 men, the biggest invasion force in history, not to be exceeded
until the Allied invasions of Normandy in 1944, nearly 700 years later.
Shigen Hojo Tokimune was petrified.
He knew what his fate would be should the Mongols reach the capital city of Kamakura.
It was well known that the Mongols refused to spill monarch's blood, but Tokimune, although
a ruler, was in truth merely a regent, not of royal blood.
His family had usurped both emperor and shogun.
His end would not be swift and after his behavior towards the envoys, he knew the Mongols would
enjoy a degree of creativity in their disposal of him.
Wild riders chased him down in his dreams.
For once, the young, hot-headed shogunal regent knew fear.
To calm him, Tokimune's spiritual counselor, a recent refugee from southern China, the
Zen master Mugaku Sogen, told him the story of when the stinking barbaric nomads had reached
his temple in China.
Mugaku had knelt unmoving on the floor, the only monk who had not fled.
The flames of Mongol devastation crackled around him as a lone rider approached, dismounted
and drew his sword for the mortal blow.
Mugaku, ignoring the stench of horse and human sweat, raised his voice to a little over a
whisper and looked the rough-looking rider in the eye.
I searched the universe and found the answer.
People are empty, even Buddha's teachings are void.
Your great sword will be as lightning cutting the spring breeze.
The warrior paused, bowed low and left the monk to live.
Mugaku had made his way eastwards to the land where the sun rose and Buddha's law was still
revered.
Quietly, the aged Chinese monk advised the young Japanese ruler to meditate, to find
the source of his cowardice and fear within.
Having done so, Tokimune allegedly screamed, Katsu!
Victory!
Mugaku smiled.
It is true that the son of a lion roars as a lion.
Tokimune sent messengers to the court to request that all temples and shrines pray for victory.
Japan was on high alert.
Kikuchi Takefusa, mounted atop a fine steed, bound in purple armor, crimson cape billowing
in the fresh sea breeze, watched the water boil with enemy ships.
Six hundred years before, his family had been placed on this border after the fall of Baekje
to guard against invasion from what once had been their Korean homeland.
That attack had never come and countless generations had lived in peace.
Until now.
The Mongols had brought their Korean, Jurchen and Chinese vassals to subjugate and add yet
another realm to their vast empire.
Would they never be satisfied?
The Korea-based fleet had ravaged the outer islands of Tsushima and Iki again and on the
21st of June, 1281, the enemy had appeared off the Kyushu horizon.
The fighting was fierce in Hakata Bay, but all attempts at landing had been foiled by
the Samurai forces.
However, the great ships remained, threatening and enormous, darkening the ocean, awaiting
the massive but severely delayed reinforcements from China which would undoubtedly deal a
mortal blow.
But the defenders did not sit idle.
Small boats put out in the dead of each night, Mongol ships were boarded, their crews put
to the sword, vessels were fired and set loose to cause panic.
A pandemic broke out.
Thousands of the invaders perished.
The ships started to rot.
Then the China fleet arrived, months late but glorious in its great multitude.
There was little hope for the defenders, they knew their time had come.
The retired Emperor Kamiyama sent an offering to his divine ancestor Amaterasu in her chief
shrine at Ise, imploring her to intervene to save her children.
That very same evening, a storm exploded from the blue August skies.
The wind roared and the waves rose higher than the enemy ships' mastheads.
Susanoo, god of storms, was doing his sister's Amaterasu's bidding at last.
When the Susanoo had had enough, the great Khan and son of heaven's vast army and armada
were nothing more than throngs of forlorn bodies and an abundance of driftwood, gently
lapping against the quiet Kyushu shores in Amaterasu's bright, soft summer radiance.
When the wicked invaders again arrived in 1281 and all persons, believing that the expulsion
of the enemy could be effected only by divine will and never by human power, reverently
looked up to heaven, a divine storm rose in mighty force and scattered the enemy ships
and the enemy perished all at once.
In China, the Mongols never totally recovered from the massive material and morale-seeping
defeat and although their Chinese domination would struggle on until 1368, it had been
in truth dealt a mortal blow.
Against all the odds, Japan's ancient, mythical mother, Amaterasu, with a helping hand from
her good-for-nothing storm god brother, had won the day.
A new, Japanese unity was formed in Mongol fire.
The island country of rival clans, competing power centers and riven factions that had
disintegrated into banditry and disunity 400 years before and only in the last century
found an uneasy balance and firm borders forged in civil war, had, under threat of
foreign invasion, established a feeling that it had never fully enjoyed before.
That of one nation, united against a common enemy.
Japan would remain Japan.
