As promised in my last post, I have translated part of Chapter One of Shimizu Katsuyuki's eye-opening book on medieval Japanese attitudes towards the "other" and those mechanisms that were employed to try to cope with natural disaster. At present, I'm only planning to cover the first part of the chapter, which I will divide into two parts (otherwise this will be an extremely long post!).  Incidentally, the numbers in parenthesis refers to page numbers. Enjoy at your leisure.

Chapter One:  The Mongols are coming!

An island on a volatile border

This particular tale occurred one year before the outbreak of the great famine of Ōei. At the time, the island of Tsushima (対馬, now Tsushima City, part of Nagasaki Prefecture) functioned as a sort of ‘gateway to the west’, linking together both northern Kyushu with the Korean peninsula. Its total surface area amounted to 710 square kilometres. When one looks at a map of this large island, which unfolds gradually in both a northerly and southernly direction, one notices that it is fairly broken up in the central section, effectively dividing the island into two.  In the middle of this area, on a peninsula known as Ozaki located in Asō bay, lay a fishing village known as Tsuchiyori (土寄).  On the 20th day of the 6th month of the 26th year of Ōei (or 1419), around 10 or so ships appeared in the waters off the coast located near the village. (12)

Upon seeing the silhouette of the ships on the horizon, the villagers thought that they were friendly vessels returning to port, and so collecting up both sake wine and victuals, took these to the coast and waited for the vessels to arrive. However, it soon became clear that these vessels weren’t those of a friendly neighbour. The ten or so ships that the villagers had first seen soon grew in number, so much so that they eventually constituted an armada of 227 vessels. The vessels were heading straight towards the village, where it was obvious that they planned to make landfall. Yet who on earth did they belong to? In a panic, the villagers threw away the food they had brought with them and their belongings and scattered in the direction of the mountains behind the village. (13-14)

Fifty or so villagers decided to test their mettle and so took to their boats and headed out in the direction of the armada. Their vessels were soon reduced to matchwood by the mysterious armada, which then laid anchor off the coast and despatched smaller vessels. These vessels disgorged troops one after another, who quickly dispersed into the island’s interior. These troops seized 129 vessels belonging to the villagers, and after judging that 20 or so vessels were still suitable for use, burned the remaining boats. They also set fire to 1,939 houses belonging to the villagers, and destroyed their crops.  During the course of their attack, the invading army killed 114 villagers and took 21 hostages, and managed to occupy one section of the island. (14)

The invading army then spent the next few days crossing from Asō bay to attack the village of Kofunakoshi (小船越) which it eventually seized. In a short space of time, the invading army had become an army of occupation, managing to divide both the southern and northern parts of the island with a majority of their strength focused in Asō bay. On the 26th day of the 6th month (or the 27th day of the 7th month according to the Gregorian calendar), the invading army concentrated in troops in the Nii gun region not far from Asō bay. These troops were divided into three separate armies, with the largest heading off in the direction of the north of the island. At the time, the rulers of Tsushima island, the Sō (宗) family, were based in the north at Sakaura (佐賀浦) bay, which functioned as a de facto capital. Quite possibly the largest section of the invading army planned to march north to force Sakaura to capitulate, and consolidate their control over the island. (14)

Yet it was at this point that the native forces on Tsushima island began to resist the army of invasion. The corps of troops that constituted the left wing of the invading army was surprised by an ambush laid by the Tsushima forces, which resulted in around 110 deaths among the invasion force. This initial success has been relayed by islanders to their descendants in florid terms under the title of “the Battle of Nukadake” (糠嶽合戦). This victory became a catalyst for islander resistance to the invading army, who then set about creating a more organised defence from the interior of the island. (15) Meanwhile, the right wing of the invading army also encountered fierce resistance from islanders, so much so that the central part of the army had to forego landing at Nii gun in order to deal with the threat to its right flank. (15)

There were no further major battles between the native islanders and the invading army, who then settled into a series of small tit for tat skirmishes while moving from one part of the island to another. Eventually the Sō were able to broker a truce with the invasion force, which withdrew from Tsushima at the beginning of the 7th month. (15)

The details of the events above are an overview of an attack carried out against a border island by the vessels belonging to a foreign nation. Those who are particularly knowledgeable about history will have already correctly surmised that the incident referred to here is the “Foreign Piracy of the Ōei Period” (応永の外冦), which is an example of the type of internecine warfare that occurred in the border islands during the medieval era. The “mysterious armada” that attacked the island was no gang of lawless seafarers, but was a legitimate army organised and despatched from the Kingdom of Li on the Korean peninsula. (15)

At the time, the Korean monarchy had suffered no end of strife at the hands of gangs of pirates known as “Wakō” (倭寇) that plied the East China Sea. As such, the Li dynasty had taken it upon itself to launch an attack against what was regarded as the heart of the Wakō territories, the island of Tsushima (in Korea, the incident is known as the “Suppression of the Eastern Barbarians” or 己亥東征). The Korean army that landed on Tsushima did not simply burn down the villages on the island, but also freed 31 Chinese men and women who had been abducted by the villagers.  The viewpoint of the Korean monarchy that regarded Tsushima as a hotbed of piracy was correct, as it is difficult to argue with the fact that a lack of arable land on the island forced the islanders to conduct raids on the continent in order to steal both property and people. The leader of these pirate gangs, who controlled the straits and who was the first to suffer his house being burnt down, was the head of Tsuchiyori village, Sōda Saemon Tarō (早田左衛門太郎). (16)

Sōda, together with other prominent pirate leaders, hid their fleets in the bays and inlets in the centre of the island, and from their base at Tsuchiyori and Kofunakoshi embarked out across the East China Sea, striking terror into the hearts of the inhabitants of the mainland and the Korean peninsula.  One year before the invasion took place, the head of Tsushima island Sō Sadashige (宗貞茂) died of illness, so that at the time of the invasion the head of the island forces was the infant Tsutsu Kumamaru (later Sō Sadamori, or 宗貞盛). Given that the previous lord of Tsushima was dead and his successor not yet ready to rule, Sōda Saemon and other kokujin on the island moved to separate themselves from the control of the Sō family, and so began to engage in piracy on an hereto unforseen level. (16)

Although this invasion saw deaths in battle in the hundreds, fortunately the conflict itself lasted no more than a week, and was predominantly confined to the area around Asō bay.   As such, though it was certainty a problem to those involved, it was no different to the many other forms of regional strife that occurred across the country during the medieval period. However, to those living far away in the capital that got wind of the incident, it certainly couldn’t be treated so lightly. (17)

What does society do when the most basic of social mores break down in the midst of or in the aftermath of natural disaster? Although partly prompted by the events of March of last year, my curiosity in regard to this question was initially piqued during my time studying at Otani University. In the course of reading through a number of historical records (or Komonjo, 古文書), I came across one written for the 30th day of the 2nd month of the 2nd year of Kansho (寛正2年, or 1461). The record was contained in the diary belonging to one Taikyoku (太極) of Tofukuji (東福寺) temple, one of the Gozan (五山) or prominent Zen temples located in the capital (what was commonly referred to as the `Rakuchu`, 洛中). Taikyoku himself was a Zen priest, who took it upon himself to record the affairs of the capital from the 3rd year of Choroku (長禄3年, 1459) through to the 2nd year of Onin (応仁2年, 1467). As such, he was witness to some of the most violent upheavals to occur in medieval Japanese history, as well as some of the gravest in human tragedies.

Taikyoku`s diary, titled the `Aoyama Nikki` (碧山日記), contained a particularly disturbing entry for the date cited above. Before entering into an examination of that particular day, it might pay to first detail the context behind which Taikyoku decided to record his entry. As many medieval scholars of Japanese history have noted, the mid fifteenth century experienced what could be described as a `minor ice age` prompted by unusual degrees of volcanic activity that affected global weather patterns (a point well illustrated in the book `大飢饉、室町社会を襲う！` by Shimizu Katsuyuki - 清水克行). Instability in the weather resulted in the outbreak of drought in the 3rd year of Choroku, which was followed in the 8th month of that year by a typhoon that struck the capital region, which swept large numbers of dwellings belonging to the poorer residents of the capital into the Kamo river where they subsequently drowned. In the 1st year of Kansho (1461), drought returned to the capital region, forcing many of the residents of local shoen estates to abandon their fields and head to the capital in the hope that some of the tribute (in coin and produce) that they paid to the estate owners (normally either large temple complexes or aristocratic houses) would still be available to head off starvation.

Unfortunately, such were the large numbers of people streaming into the capital every day that soon the streets became clogged with the destitute and the dying, for what charity the temples could provide was soon exhausted by the sheer scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding before them. It was during this crisis that Taikyoku sought to note an episode that shocked him, the language of which still retains its powerful imagery in spite of all subsequent tragedies on a similar scale that followed. The original diary entry read as thus;

晦日。辛丑。以事入京、自四条坊橋上見其上流、々屍無数、如塊石磊落、流水壅塞、其腐臭不可当也、東去西来、為之流涕寒心、或曰、自正月至是月、城中死者八万二千人也、余曰、以何知此乎、曰、城北有一僧、以小片木造八万四千率堵、一々置之於尸骸上、今余二千云、大概以此記焉也、雖城中、所不及見、又郭外原野溝壑之屍、不得置之云、願阿徹（撤）流民之屋.

Translation: The 30th day during the cycle of Kanotoshi. I entered the capital in order to conduct some business. While looking down at the river from the railings of the Shijo bridge, I saw countless numbers of corpses lumped together like so many tiles and stones. Indeed there were so many that they interrupted the flow of water, and you cannot imagine the smell that they made. I then crossed from the east of the capital to the west, all the while struggling to contain my tears and harden myself against such scenes. It is said that from the first month of this year through till this month, the number of dead within the capital has reached 82,000. One might ask how I came to know this. It is said that there is a monk who resides in the north of the capital. This monk prepared 84,000 small wooden funeral markers, which he then proceeded to place on each and every corpse he came across. They say that now he only has 2,000 markers left. This should indeed be noted. However they say that there are still bodies within the capital and lying outside it in the fields and along the riverbanks that have not been marked. In the midst of all this, the Ganami (願阿, monks tasked with distributing alms to the poor and other duties in the capital) had no choice but to remove the dwellings of the destitute.

What compounded this tragedy was the seeming indifference showed by the shogun at the time, Ashikaga Yoshimasa (足利義政), to the suffering that was so vividly present in the capital and the surrounding region. In the midst of such tragedy, Yoshimasa initiated a series of renovations on the Hana no Gosho (花の御所) palace, in addition to directing work to begin on the construction of the Silver Pavilion in the north of the capital. In spite of protestations from the Emperor Gohanazono (後花園), who well understood the financial straits in which the estates found themselves, Yoshimasa`s obstinance fueled resentment at the profligacy of the Bakufu in the midst of hardship, and contributed to the rise of individuals such as the Kanrei Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sozen, who recognised that in Yoshimasa they had a weak ruler driven by self-interest over stability, a factor that would eventually split the Bakufu in two and provoke the outbreak of the Onin War in 1467.

What Taikyoku managed to show in his diary entry was both the best and worst of human nature at work in the midst of a crisis. The monks of the temples in the capital tried their best to relieve the suffering of the people, going so far as to provide the unnamed and unburied corpses littering the capital with some semblance of a funeral. At the same time, the knowledge that while this was continuing the Bakufu was otherwise occupied with trying to rebuild its private dwellings (ostensibly to show that the process of regeneration and rebirth had begun), appears callous in the extreme, and it is small wonder that this led to a loss of respect for the institution of the Bakufu.

In my next post, I will include a translation of the first chapter from Shimizu Katsuyuki`s book, which explores the medieval Japanese fear of the `other`, more specifically, the Mongols. The experience of the Japanese during the 13th century in coming into contact with the Mongols, and the trauma this produced, influenced Japanese attitudes towards any perceived threat from the continent for the next two hundred years. Even those quite distant from Kyushu and the western provinces would accept any rumour of an invasion as truth, and promptly fret about what this would mean for their personal safety and that of their property.