| Battle of Kōan | |||||||
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| Part of the Mongol invasions of Japan | |||||||
Japanese attack ships. Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba (蒙古襲来絵詞), circa 1293. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Kamakura shogunate | Yuan Dynasty Goryeo |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Hōjō Tokimune | Shinedu Kim Bang-gyeong |
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| Strength | |||||||
| 40,000-60,000 | 142,000 men in 4400 ships | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Heavy | 120,000+ | ||||||
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The Battle of Kōan (弘安の役 Kōan no eki), also known as the Second Battle of Hakata Bay, was the second attempt by the Yuan Dynasty founded by the Mongols to invade Japan. They had failed seven years earlier, in the Battle of Bun'ei, and would spend the summer of 1281 gathering two invasion forces, only to see it destroyed by a storm, called by the Japanese "divine wind", or kamikaze.
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Following the failed first invasion by the Yuan navy, the Japanese made many defense preparations. Many forts were constructed along the coast line. Samurai also further trained themselves, perfecting their swordsmanship.
Early 1280, Kublai Khan planned another invasion of Japan. He ordered his ship builders to rebuild the whole fleet within a year. As a result, many of the ships were poorly made, and many were flat-bottomed river boats requisitioned by the Emperor.
By June 1281, 900 Yuan ships were gathered in Korea, dubbed the Eastern Route Army. They were crewed by 17,000 sailors, and transported 10,000 Korean soldiers and 15,000 Mongols and Chinese. The Southern Route Army, meanwhile, was assembled just south of the Yangtze River, in China. It purportedly consisted of 100,000 men on 3,500 ships. As before, Iki and Tsushima islands fell quickly under the great numbers and battle prowess of the Yuan forces.
The Eastern Route Army arrived at Hakata Bay on June 21, and decided to proceed with the invasion without waiting for the larger Southern force which had still not left China. They were a short distance to the north and east of where their force landed in 1274, and were in fact beyond the walls and defenses constructed by the Japanese. However, the samurai made up for this quickly, assaulting the invaders with waves of skillful attackers, denying them the beachhead.
At night, small boats would carry small bands of samurai into the bay, among the Yuan fleet. Under cover of darkness, they would sneak aboard the enemy ships, kill as many as they could, and escape back to land before dawn. This harassing tactic led the Yuan forces to retreat to Tsushima, where they would wait for their Southern Route Army. However, over the course of the next several weeks, the close quarters and hot weather would kill 3,000 men. Yuan forces never gained a beachhead.
The first of the Southern force ships arrived on July 16, and by August 12, the two fleets were ready to attack Japan. Beginning on August 15, an incredible tempest struck the Tsushima Straits, lasting two full days and decimating the Yuan fleet. Contemporary Japanese accounts indicate that over 4000 ships were destroyed in the storm; 80 percent of the Yuan soldiers either drowned or were killed by samurai on the beaches. The loss of ships was so great that "a person could walk across from one point of land to another on a mass of wreckage".[1]
Kublai Khan began to gather forces to prepare for a third invasion attempt in 1284, but ultimately was distracted by events in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and its costs, and no third attempt was ever made.