The First Mongol invasion of Japan occurred in 1274 when a Mongol invasion fleet from Korea attacked the Japanese archipelago, conquering Tsushima and Iki before their army was fought off by samurai at the Battle of Bun'ei on Kyushu and a sizeable portion of their fleets sunk by major storms. The Mongols were forced to withdraw to their ships after only one day of fighting, and a typhoon forced their fleet to return to Korea, with many of the returning ships sinking during the storm.
History[]
In 1274 the Mongol leader Kublai Khan dispatched a fleet of 900 ships from Korea, carrying a combined force of Mongol, Chinese, and Korean troops. The army landed at Hakata Bay, after having slaughtered the defenders of Tsushima and Iki islands. It was the first time samurai had encountered a foreign force and they were startled by the enemy's unceremonious form of warfare, ignoring calls for single combat and instead, as a Japanese chronicle puts it, "rushing forward all together in a mass, grappling with any individuals they could catch and killing them." This shock was augmented by the Mongol use of massed bowmen and gunpowder bombs flung by catapults, forcing the Japanese to retreat inland toward Dazaifu. Japan seemed in danger of falling to the invaders, but the Mongols reembarked and disappeared almost as soon as they had come, presumably having only constituted a reconnaissance in force. The oft-repeated story that they were scattered by bad weather seems unlikely.