OVERVIEW OF JAPANESE HISTORIC RELATIONS WITH OTHER COUNTRIES

Aside from unsuccessful attempts at invasion in 1274 and 1281 by the Mongols under Emperor Kublai Khan, Japan has neither faced a foreign invasion nor a crisis of national sovereignty due to foreign invaders throughout its history. A nine hundred-ship fleet faced a fierce challenge from Japanese samurai and bad weather; and was forced into retreat in 1274, the first attempt at invasion. In this attempt, a combined force of about thirty thousand Mongols, Chinese and Koreans tried to subdue Japan but were driven back by a big typhoon. Prior to this invasion, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who had succeeded in subduing most of China and Korea, sent emissaries and demanded that Japanese rulers accept their country as being a tributary vassal of the Mongol kingdom. This was rejected by the Regent Hojo Tokimune (125 l~84) in Kyoto. After failing in his first attempt, Kublai Khan became even more determined to invade the Japanese archipelago. He sent a mission of envoys to convince the Japanese rulers while preparing for war but the envoys were beheaded.

The second attempt at an invasion, with an estimated one hundred forty thousand men, also failed after two months of fighting. Another big typhoon in the Strait of Tsushima or the island of Takashima, in southwestern Japan, destroyed a more powerful invading fleet than the earlier invasion and forced them to withdraw in 1281. Some have estimated the number of invading ships could have been as many as forty-four hundred. The Mongol armies who could not flee from Japanese soil were killed or captured and enslaved. Although Japan was successful in stopping the invading force of Mongols, many Japanese regional forces also suffered heavy casualties in the battle, and the Japanese economy was severely affected. It had a devastating domestic repercussion,
leading to the end of the Kamakura shogunate.


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The Mongol forces were turned back more by strong winds rather than the relatively small groups of Japanese warriors. The typhoons struck both times, destroying much of the Mongol fleet and forcing the remainder to retreat. This incident is known as kamikaze, or “divine wind,” which saved Japan from foreign invading ships and strengthened the belief of Japan being a “sacred and divine land.” Even after the failure of two attempts, Kublai Khan made further preparations to invade Japan but these were cancelled after his death in 1294. In this manner, Japan enjoyed complete independence from the outside world for many centuries except for a brief occupation after World War II by the Allied powers. After the abortive Mongol attempts at the invasion of Japan, diplomatic relationships and intercourse between China and Japan ceased, but the private trading relationship resumed some time later. Private trading was carried out despite hostilities and occasional disturbances and again ships began to carry goods between the two countries. Japanese monks went to China for higher studies.Chinese monks also came to Japan with the purpose of teaching in Japanese monasteries.

Besides these incidents, Japan was protected from armed invasion from the continental powers and neighboring countries for many centuries. Japan did not have any close, dangerous neighbors who were looking for opportunities to invade. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, there was a remarkable revival and expansion of Chinese fleets. The Chinese commander Cheng Ho (1371-1434) commanded the largest fleet in world history during the Ming period between 1405 and 1433. The Chinese sent their great fleets southward, around the Indian Ocean and beyond. These Chinese fleets sailed to Sumatra, Java, India, Ceylon, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and as far as the coast of Africa. They went as far as Timor and Moluccas in the east and to the Persian Gulf, Madagascar, and Somalia in the west. These ships carried many thousands of sailors, officials, merchants and soldiers in their voyage. But even with their sea power flourishing and expariding, the Chinese were reluctant to invade or interfere with the Japanese archipelago. In this way, the Japanese people lived in their land without disturbance from the outside world.

Before the arrival of Europeans in Japan, the Japanese trading, cultural and religious relationships were limited to China, Korea, and Ryukyulslanc1S (present-day Okinawa). The importance of the Ryukyu Islands as a trading
center increased when friction between Japan and China mounted due to Japanese wako pirates attacking Chinese seaports during the Ming dynasty, especially from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. In the second half of the fourteenth century, the Emperor Hun-wa of China refused to receive Japanese envoys and the relationship between the two nations deteriorated. Chinese ships were prohibited from sailing into Japan, and Chinese people were forbidden to go abroad, including Japan.

When the diplomatic and economic relationship was severed between Japan and China during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Ryukyu Islands prospered as a business center and entre’pot through which goods were imported from the Philippines, Siam (Thailand), Java (Indonesia), Malacca (Malaysia), Patani (present-day southern province of Thailand) and other Southeast Asian ports, including China and Korea. Many Ryukyuan merchants regularly sailed to different ports with goods. The Ryukyuan people developed strong commercial and cultural relationships with the Chinese of what is today Fujian province. The , Ryukyu Islands served as a bridge and trading intermediary between Japan and other countries. The islands maintained close cultural and economic relationships with different countries and its culture and trade flourished.

One of the major compulsions for Japan to have limited contact with other nations in trading and other relationships was the geographical barrier and its isolated position. Japan is an island country, which is separated by the sea around it. The nearest part of the Asian continent is about one hundred twenty miles, between Kyushu and Korea. In the days of primitive navigation, this distance barrier was considered fairly big. This geographical separation and location made the Japanese peninsula difficult to access from the outside world, and probably became one of the major factors in fostering a habit of isolation and aversion to foreign intercourse. Moreover, even without trade and commerce with other nations, the inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago were able to fulfill their basic necessities during that period. For centuries, Japan remained aloof from world affairs and outside mainstream Asian history and development due to this geographical barrier of the sea. As a result, throughout most of its history, Japan has been one of the most isolated nations among the major countries around the world. When the first Encyclopedia Britannica was published in the eighteenth century,

It described in one sentence only, the latitude and longitude of the country, as all that was known in the West about Japan.
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