kamikaze of 1274 and 1281, (1274, 1281), a pair of massive typhoons (tropical cyclones) that each wrecked a Mongol fleet attempting to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281. The storms destroyed most of the Mongol ships and dispersed the rest, forcing the attackers to abandon their plans and fortuitously saving Japan from foreign conquest.
The two Mongol fleets were dispatched by Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan who had conquered China and had become the first emperor of its Yuan (Mongol) dynasty. The first invasion force that attacked Japan in the autumn of 1274 comprised about 30,000 to 40,000 men (mostly ethnic Chinese and Koreans, except for the Mongolian officers) and an estimated 500 to 900 vessels. The typhoon struck as the ships lay at anchor in Hakata Bay, Kyushu, Japan, sinking about one-third of them, with the rest limping home; it is estimated that 13,000 of Kublai’s men drowned.
The second Mongol fleet was much larger, made up of two separate forces—one setting out from Masan (Korea) and the other sailing from southern China—with a combined force of 4,400 vessels and some 140,000 soldiers and sailors. The two fleets joined up near Hakata Bay, again the main point of attack, on Aug. 12, 1281. On August 15, as they were about to assault the much smaller Japanese forces defending the island (about 40,000 samurai and other fighting men), a massive typhoon hit, wrecking the Mongol fleet and once again foiling the invasion attempt. The invading forces suffered tremendous casualties, with at least half the Mongol warriors drowning and all but a few hundred ships from the fleet perishing during the storm. Most of the men who survived the storm were hunted down and killed by the samurai over the following days. Only a small fraction of Kublai Khan’s original force returned home from this ill-fated expedition, one of the largest and most disastrous attempts at a naval invasion in history.
Literally meaning “divine wind,” the term kamikaze was coined in honour of the 1281 typhoon, as it was perceived to be a gift from the gods, supposedly granted after a retired emperor went on a pilgrimage and prayed for divine intervention. The term was later used in World War II to refer to the Japanese suicide pilots who deliberately crashed their planes into enemy targets, usually ships.