THE DIVINE WIND

With his invasion forces scattered by storms, the Khan planned yet another attempt to conquer Japan

After the disaster on his force wrought by the kamikaze, the Khan ordered a third invasion almost immediately in a last-ditch attempt to crush the Japanese. “Kublai believed his advisers when they said that the Japanese were tough fighters but sure to be defeated, like little venomous snakes,” says historian Jonathan Clements. “There were plenty of people to blame for the disaster, so the possibility remained in his mind that the Japanese had been lucky.”

However, the first two failed attacks had so badly drained material and manpower from Korea and the Yangtze delta that the Mongols needed time to rebuild their forces again. Clements says: “In 1283 an attack force of over 600 ships was assembled under a Mongol leader, but that was called off because Kublai had been plunged into a civil war in Inner Asia with one of his relatives and he needed the resources elsewhere. In 1284 he sent an emissary to Japan, but the man was murdered en route, so that held up communications again.”