Ever since 1218, the Mongol armies of Kublai Khan had been plundering northern Korea, forcing Korean troops away from the south in an effort to stem their seemingly inexorable advance.
Enter the Wokou pirates
With this, southern Korea, located close to the Japanese west coast was ripe for raiding - or so the wokou pirates presumed.
The name wokou meant “ bandits” and their oared ships, which carried large straw-mat sails and two yagua (or fighting towers), only had to appear off the coast to prompt panic in Korea and across the Yellow Sea into China.
Panic escalated even further at the prospect of attack by pirates who, according to the 13th century scholar Zheng Sixiao "did not fear death". However, despite their savage temperament, the wokou, like the Japanese samurai, valued honour and, again like the samurai, combined savagery with scruple.
The wokou made their first appearance in the historical record in 1223. That year, they struck at Korea from their bases on the northern coast of Kyushu and the islands of Iki and Tsushima.
The return of the wokou
The wokou returned in 1226, when the Koreans, forewarned by previous experience, were able to field sufficient defence forces to capture all the pirates.
This time, "several tens of ships" were involved, compared to only two the previous year. Experienced pirates from the island of Tsushima, which was soon to become a major wokou base, acted as pilots.
Weapons of the wokou
Wokou weapons spread terror and mayhem, in particular the deadly samurai-style sword which was honed to maximum sharpness. Some wokou carried a sword in each hand. Spears, tridents, bows and arrows and after 1542 when the Portuguese introduced them, guns also featured in wokou raids.
But even without the guns, the wokou assault of 1226 still managed to wreak fearful violence on the Korean mainland, "destroying people and houses and looting valuables", according to a Korean chronicler, "especially ‘silver articles’."
The wokou were rapacious, but Korean resistance was so ferocious that "half (the pirates) were killed or wounded". The wokou attempted to make a quick getaway, but were intercepted by Korean ships. Two wokou were captured and beheaded, but the rest managed to get away in the dark.
Hard times hit Kyushu
Despite this disconcerting experience, the wokou were willing to try again. They were spurred on by the destruction of the rice crop in Hizen province of Kyushu when a fierce typhoon tore through its adjacent islands in the autumn of 1226. Faced yet again with famine, the wokou resolved to make good the damage with another raid on Korea.
Unfortunately for them, though, the assaults that followed in 1227 met with almost total disaster. The Koreans once more awaited the pirates in strength. They captured two wokou ships and decapitated more than 30 pirates. Other wokou who managed to get ashore, into the mountains but were trapped in an ambush and killed.
The Koreans protest
The Koreans made vociferous protests about the raid. The Japanese were obviously feeling diplomatic, for the upshot was the public execution of around 90 pirates, who were dispatched in front of envoys who had come from Korea especially for the purpose.
After the mass executions, the pirates held off for a while, until 1232, the year after more typhoons wreaked more devastation on Kyushu. At this point, a new class of pirate entered the ring. They were junior members of the Kusano, a powerful samurai family from Karatsu on Kyushu island, who raided Korea towards the end of 1232.
Their favoured samurai status may have saved them from the death sentence, for no executions followed. This, though, did not mean that Hojo Yasutoki, the shikken or regent to the Minamoto Yasutoki was firmly against piracy, but instead of wiping it out by violent means, he preferred to co-operate with the Koreans to keep the pirates in check.
This friendlier approach persisted until the mid-13th century, when famines affecting Korea and, quite probably, Japan as well, struck yet again. To compound these disasters. the Mongols stepped up their attacks on Korea with a fresh incursion in 1253.
The end of co-operation
Co-operation had already begun to fracture in 1251, when the Koreans started building fortifications designed to keep out Japanese pirates. The wokou returned nevertheless, in 1259, following another four years of famine that ravaged both Korea and Japan.
The wokou attacked twice more, in 1263 and 1265, by which time Korea was in no fit state to put up effective resistance: the country was being absorbed by the Mongols who completed their take-over in 1273.
Kublai Khan and the Mongols invade
The Mongol incursions into Korea had already placed Japan in a very dangerous situation. Ironically, it also put the wokou pirates into a new role among the saviours of Japan. The two Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 famously failed, ultimately due to a convenient storm that struck in the latter year and wrecked Kublai Khan’s ships.
This event known as the kamikaze, or divine wind. became and still remains one of the most famous events in Japanese history.
Less renowned, but just as important was the ferocious resistance to the Mongols that was put up by the Japanese forces and included well-tried wokou tactics.
The fighting style of the wokou
Using methods long ago perfected by the wokou in pirate raids, groups of samurai rowed out to the ships by night, using small boats carrying about ten to twenty men each, which they packed tight against the Mongols’ hulls. This strategy ‘crowded’ the invaders’ ships and stopped them from creating a beachhead onshore.
In another type of attack, also carried out by night, thirty samurai swam out to a Mongol ship, leapt on board and after a short, sharp engagement beheaded the entire crew.
Hand to hand fighting, in the preferred samurai style, also took place and one samurai, Kusano Jiro, maneuvered his ship alongside a Mongol vessel in broad daylight. He lost an arm in the fierce fighting that followed. Even so, Kusano managed to set the Mongol ship on fire before escaping.
Please see also: Pirates of Japan: After the Mongol Invasions
Sources
St. John, Henry Craven: Notes and Sketches from the Wild Coasts of Nipon, with Chapters on Cruising
after Pirates in Chinese Waters: Volume 33 (Ganesha - Japan in English: Key Nineteenth-Century Sources on Japan) (Vol 33) Bucharest, Romania: Ganesha Publishing, 2005) ISBN-10: 1862100829/ISBN-13: 978-1862100824
Japanese Warriors: Samurai, Ninja, R'nin, Shinsengumi, Wokou, S'hei, Byakkotai, Yamabushi, Ikk'-Ikki, Ashigaru, Sashimono, Tokomaro, Saika Ikki - (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Library, 2009) ISBN-10: 1112448330/ISBN-13: 978-1112448331
The Wokou: The 'Japanese' Pirates
Brenda Ralph Lewis - My interest in history dates from childhood. I am presently the author of 120 books and hundreds of articles, all on historical ...
