The Mongols were on an absolute tear during the 13th century. Kublai Kahn now controlled the largest contiguous amount of land ever controlled by one person or nation, stretching all the way from the gateway to Europe in the west to the Pacific ocean in the east.
They really seemed unstoppable, and the island nation of Japan was next on their checklist.
Unfortunately for the Mongols, Japan is in the Pacific Ring of Fire, a region notorious for underwater volcanic activity. All these volcanoes mean that not only is this region very unstable—those same tectonic plates that smash into one another to create mountains are still at it today—but it’s also hotter than the surrounding regions, creating ideal conditions for unexpected and catastrophic weather.
And, of course, the invading Mongol fleet needed to cross the water to get there. The East Sea (if you’re Korean) or Sea of Japan (if you’re Japanese) is the seat of much of the terrible turmoil described above, and it’s the reason for the massive earthquake that caused the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
The first Mongol invasion in 1274 went pretty smoothly at first, with the fleet launching from Korea. The fighting in the islands of northern Kyushu was fierce, and the samurai slowed the invaders down enough so that the men retreated to their ships.
This is when a typhoon entered the Sea of Japan, sinking several Mongol ships. This was too much for the invading Mongol fleet, who regrouped and decided to come back at a later date.
That date was 1281, and this time, Kublai Khan decided to take no chances. He launched a much larger invasion from two separate locations—one from southern China, and one from Korea—would converge on Japan. Once again, they were slowed down in Kyushu by fierce resistance, which gave time for another typhoon to approach.
This second typhoon was vastly more powerful and even more devastating than the 1274 storm. Nearly all of the Mongol ships anchored at Imari Bay were destroyed, leaving behind barely enough to get everyone back home safely. The invasion was over.
Understandably, this remains a watershed moment in Japanese national identity, history, and mythology. The most powerful human force in the world was twice rebuffed by the empire of Japan, and both times humans were dwarfed by the unimaginable power of nature.
When the quagmire that was World War II began to bring the fighting closer and closer to Japan, the Japanese pilots felt this national identity. They remembered the fierce samurai who slowed the Mongol fleet down just for long enough. Most of all, they remembered that divine wind, without whose help they never would have won.
The Japanese word for divine wind is kamikaze, and that’s what the suicidal pilots called themselves. They didn’t see themselves as the samurai, but instead as the typhoon itself.
Believe it or not, the divine wind during the invading Mongol fleet isn’t the only story about massive storms involving wind and water that Japanese people still talk about today. There was an orphan tsunami that nobody saw coming in 1700:
The stories of nature interfering in the affairs of human beings almost always make for good tales, and they often help shape national identities. The ancient Greeks turned the fickle nature of the Mediterranean into the god Poseidon, and there are countless stories of shipwrecked sailors facing insurmountable obstacles.
Osiris and Isis were strongly connected to the Nile, where water both gave and took life away. The Abrahamic religions have Noah and the flood, and the Americans have even mythologized the freezing waters of Valley Forge, where Washington and his soldiers bravely fought against the water in order to surprise their heavily armed opponents.
Water is always going to be a source of inspiration for myths. If you want to find out what it really is, this might be a good next piece for you today:
Knowing your history, I was fully expecting this to be about farting. My brain simply wasn't prepared to learn useful history lessons about unsuccessful invasions of Japan.