The shoguns now in charge of Japan were extremely wary after the country was saved from Mongol invasion by a kamikaze - the “divine wind” - that wrecked Kublai Khan ‘s fleet. Forty years passed before 1320, when troops on guard duty along the coast stood down.
Ungovernable Japan
Much had changed in those four decades. For one thing, the power of the Hojo family the chief ministers to the shoguns, had declined so far that they were unable to keep the peace in Japan.
After the Hojo lost power in 1333, the standard ingredients were again present for a renewal of Japan’s habitual troubles, civil war and piracy. This was yet another response to famine, bad harvests and the desperation of a populace hard-pressed by poverty and want.
Subsequently, renewed piracy reached fresh heights of looting, slavery, intimidation and chaos. From time to time, a number of pirates were caught and beheaded and this appeared to dampen their activities for a while. But subsequently, it was back to square one all over again as conditions worsened and the old pressures returned.
The wokou return to piracy
The wokou resumed raiding in 1350 when they staged six major raids on Korea. At this time, the Mongols’ control over their Korean vassals was beginning to weaken. After 1364, when the last of the Mongols departed, there were some 125 incursions into the Korean peninsula. In 1384 alone, figures for wokou raids on Korea averaged 40 a year.
These were no mere hit-and-run strikes confined to the coastal towns and villages. They were carefully organized campaigns aimed at pre-set targets, the most common of them being the ships that took rice tax to Kaesong, the then capital city of Korea.
Such excursions took the pirates as far as the outskirts of Pyongyang on the River Taedong in northwestern Korea. Wakou depredations were so destabilising that in 1392, they prompted the demise of the Goryeo dynasty of Korea.
Anti-pirate policy in Korea
The Goryeo were replaced by the Joseon dynasty, founded by Yi Seonggye who took the title of King Taejo. Before he came to power, Taejo, who had been instrumental in improving the Korean military, promoted a very tough line against pirates.
In 1380, a large wakou fleet that appeared at the mouth of the River Geum in southern Korea was shattered by Korean cannon fire. In 1389, a Korean raid on Tsushima, one of the major wokou bases, destroyed some 300 pirate ships. For good measure, several houses onshore were set on fire. The attackers broke into jails on Tsushima and released around 100 Korean prisoners.
Korean attack on Tsushima
Tsushima came under attack again on June 19, 1419 when the Koreans declared war and mounted what the Japanese later called the Oei Invasion. This time, the Koreans played cunning.
A large wokou fleet had gathered at Tsushima, but the Koreans waited until the ships had left harbor on their next raiding expedition. Then, with the wokou out of the way, the Koreans set about destroying Tsushima’s pirate bases.
The Korean fleet of 227 vessels entered the bay between the two islands of Tsushima and, next day, put 17,285 soldiers ashore. They proceeded to plunder homes and buildings, destroy crops, kill islanders and generally create mayhem.
Next, though, the Koreans were pulled up short. They encountered an army which they mistakenly identified as pirates. They soon discovered their error when the ‘pirates ‘ - in reality well-trained samurai - caught them in an ambush and killed 200 Koreans in what the locals termed the Battle of Nukadake.
The threat of another typhoon
Sadamori who belonged to the So clan that ruled Tsushima, called for a ceasefire and subtly reminded the Koreans that at this time of year, the typhoon season was about to begin.
Psychologically, this was a stroke of genius, for the devastation the typhoons of 1274 and 1281 had wrought on Kublai Khan’s fleets was still fresh in Korean minds. In any case, Sadamori was speaking no more than the truth: the ‘kamikaze’ was still a dangerous reality in the waters surrounding Japan.
The invaders got the message and withdrew from Tsushima. Japanese prisoners were released after an emissary from the So clan offered the Joseon government tributes of copper and sulphur. By 1443, after more than twenty years of good relations, the head of the So clan was permitted to organise some fifty voyages to Korea each year and his family became ‘gatekeepers’ regulating the flow of trade.
The Korean raid on Tsushima, intended as a punitive expedition, turned out to have a happy ending. But as Sadamori and the So clan realised, everything depended on their ability to put a stop to wokou activity. They could not afford to fail and within ten years of the raid, investigators from Korea were able to report: ‘If the pirates of the east and west were to join together, there would be no stopping them... Tsushima is the place where all the pirates gather.....So Sadamori ordered his people not to let pirates from the west take (on) any water..’
Wokou attacks on China
But stopping the wokou was not as easy as that. Tsushima might be closed to pirates, but there was a lot of other space in which the pirates could operate.
This time, it was China that came under attack. Chinese territory had been raided in 1308 and 1311, but these were minor excursions. Serious business began in 1358, when the wokou directed a three-pronged assault at the Shandong peninsula, Jiangsu and the coastal regions south of the River Yangtze delta.
At this stage, the Yuan dynasty founded by the mighty Kublai Khan had declined to such an extent that it was unable to put up serious resistance. In 1368, the Yuan were overthrown by the Ming, and they took up the pirate challenge as soon as they came to power.
Please see also: Pirates of Japan: The Terrifying Wokou 1369-1548
Sources
- Rees , David: Korea: An Illustrated History: From Ancient Times to 1945 (Illustrated Histories (Hippocrene))(New York, NY: Hippocrene Books Inc. 2001) ISBN-10: 9780781808736/ISBN-13: 978-0781808736/ASIN: 0781808731
- Turnbull, Stephen and Hook, Richard: (Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK: Pirate of the Far East: 941-1644 (Warrior) Osprey Publishing, 2007) ISBN-10: 9781846031748 ISBN-13: 978-1846031748/ASIN: 1846031745
- Wokou
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 ...
