|
Relics of the Kamikaze
|
|
by James P. Delgado
|
Excavations
off Japan's coast are
uncovering Kublai Khan's ill-fated invasion fleet.
|
Illustration, based on contemporary depictions in scrolls
and discoveries from excavation of the Takashima shipwreck, depicts a
warship from the Mongol invasion fleet. (KOSUWA)
|
Stepping off
the dock into the warm, murky waters of Imari Bay, I swam to the
bottom, then followed a line staked out down a
steep slope. The visibility was poor, particularly as excavations had
stirred up soft mud, but suddenly I saw the wreck. Unlike other sites I've
dived on, the seabed here was not dominated by a large hull. Instead,
clusters of timbers and artifacts suggested that a ship, or ships, had
crashed into the shore and been ripped apart.
There were
bright red leather armor fragments, a pottery bowl decorated with
calligraphy, and wood with what seemed like fresh burn marks. My heart
started to pound when I swam up to one object and realized it was an intact
Mongol helmet. Nearby was a cluster of iron arrow tips and a round ceramic
object, a tetsuhau, or bomb. Scholars had doubted whether such
bombs, filled with white powder, existed this early, yet here it was. I
just floated there, lost in thought that the detritus of this ancient
battle lay here as fresh as if the ship had sunk yesterday, not seven centuries
ago. The experience brought the story of Kublai Khan's invasions of Japan and the
kamikaze--the legendary "divine wind" said to have destroyed his
fleets in 1274 and 1281--into the realm of the tangible, touchable past.
|
Working in
this small cove on the shore of Takashima, an island off Japan's Kyushu
coast, underwater archaeologists led by Kenzo Hayashida of the Kyushu
Okinawa Society for Underwater Archaeology (KOSUWA) have excavated the
broken remains of a massive Chinese warship, lost during the khan's
invasion of 1281. This past August, I was privileged to join the KOSUWA
team as the first Western archaeologist to dive on the site. The
fragments of the ship and the artifacts being recovered here--from
weapons, provisions, and personal effects to the remains of the crew--are
giving the world its first detailed view of a ship from a famous battle
that ended when a storm smashed the khan's fleet.
|
Broken into
fragments and scattered by the storm that wrecked it, the ship has already
yielded thousands of artifacts, many remarkably well preserved by centuries
of burial in silt. As amazing as the artifacts is the ship itself. The
hull, made of iron-fastened planks with a large keel that has just started
to emerge from the sea floor, had watertight compartments. Although the
Japanese archaeologists caution that they have not yet completed excavation
of the site, the warship appears to have been about 230 feet in length,
twice as big as contemporary European ones. The huge anchor, indicative of
the vessel's size, is a massive wood-and-stone assembly weighing more than
a ton. Its red oak stock, now broken, was 23 feet long. Analysis of the
wood and the granite used in the anchor shows that they originated in China's Fujian Province, site of a major
trading port and a marshaling point for the fleet that attacked Japan in 1281. As subjects
of the Mongols, China's Sung Dynasty
provided most of the fleet--4,400 ships according to Chinese records--and
many of the troops for the invasion.
|
|
Artifacts recovered from the shipwreck site include
ceramics, the vessel's anchor, and bundles of arrows. (KOSUWA)
|
In the
1920s, Japanese archaeologists began excavating remains of a 12.4-mile-long
defensive wall built in and around the ancient port of Hakata (modern Fukuoka) in anticipation of
the 1281 invasion. These investigations were part of a nationalistic drive to
find and restore portions of the wall in order to reinforce the story of Japan's miraculous rescue,
thanks to the emperor and his divine ancestors who sent the kamikaze. The
story of the invasion and the kamikaze grew in importance to the Japanese
government's reinterpretation of its past as the nation prepared for war.
After the
end of World War II, archaeological work around Fukuoka occasionally yielded
stone anchor stocks thought to be from the Mongol fleets, although Hakata's
long history as a port might have accounted for such finds. The possibility
of discovering more concrete evidence of the invasions led Torao Mozai, a Tokyo University engineering
professor, to Takashima in 1980 to see what might lie on the seabed there.
On Mozai's first trip, local fishermen who had trawled the bottom of Imari
Bay for generations showed him ceramic pots and other finds brought up in
their nets that hinted at a number of shipwrecks. One find piqued Mozai's
interest. Discarded in a fisherman's toolbox was a square bronze artifact.
Engraved in Chinese and in Phagspa, a written form of Mongolian, it was the
personal seal of a Mongol commander. The seal was clear evidence that the
fishermen were pulling up relics from Kublai Khan's lost fleets.
|
Engravings on this seal identify it as belonging to a Mongol
commander, proof that fishermen at Takashima Island had found
artifacts from Kublai Khan's ships. (KOSUWA)
|
Mozai, known
as the "father of underwater archaeology" in Japan, used sonar to
survey the sea floor. Divers checking promising sonar contacts in 1981
recovered iron swords, stone catapult balls, spearheads, stone hand mills
for grinding rice (although some may have been used to prepare gunpowder),
and stone anchor stocks. Mozai's finds paved the way for a new generation
of Japanese archaeologists to work in the waters off Takashima, among them
Kenzo Hayashida.
Since 1991,
Hayashida and KOSUWA, which he founded, have conducted annual field seasons
at Takashima, surveying the bottom of Imari Bay and performing
limited excavations to gauge the number of potential wreck sites and the
range of material culture remaining on the seabed after centuries of
typhoons and generations of fishermen using dragnets and trawls. In 1994,
KOSUWA discovered three wood-and-stone anchors at Kozaki Harbor, a small cove on
Takashima's southern coast. The largest anchor was still set, its rope
cable stretched toward shore. Buried in mud about 500 feet from the shore
and in 70 feet of water, the anchor was a tantalizing clue that a wreck lay
nearby. But no massive target appeared in the probes of the surrounding
area, just a number of smaller anomalies. Suspecting that this might be a
wreck that had broken up, either in 1281 or through the action of typhoons,
Hayashida began excavation. In the 1994-1995 season,
KOSUWA recovered 135 artifacts near the shoreline, then slowly traced the
finds back into deeper water through the 2001 season.
The ship's main anchor, made of stone and wood, weighed more tan one. (KOSUWA)
|
|
That
October, the years of fieldwork paid off with the discovery of the ship's
remains. After 20 years of investigation, the waters of Imari Bay finally yielded,
albeit in more than one piece, one of the khan's ships. But
government-financed construction of a new fish-farming installation
directly atop the wreck site was slated to begin shortly. While that
project provided funds to KOSUWA's investigations, the 2,600-square-foot
site had to be completely excavated by the end of 2002. Work this past
year--aided by a large team of divers, underwater communication systems,
and an intensive program of excavation in cooperation with the Takashima
Museum of Folk History and Culture and the Fukuoka City Museum--proceeded rapidly.
In a series
of dives, I was able to watch as the site yielded an incredible array of
well-preserved features and artifacts. The main portion of the wreck site
lies in 45 feet of water and is buried beneath four feet of thick, viscous
mud. Working with a documentation crew, I watched as they mapped each
artifact, photographing and then recovering ceramics, tortoiseshell combs, scraps of red leather armor, hull planks, and part of a
watertight bulkhead.
The
artifacts range from personal effects, such as a small bowl on which was
painted the name of its owner, a commander Weng, to provisions and the
implements of war. The provisions include a large number of storage jars in
various sizes, all of them hastily and crudely made. They hint at the
rapid, if not rushed, pace of the khan's mobilization for the invasion. So,
too, do the anchor stones. Chinese anchor stones of the period are usually
large, well-carved, single stones that were set into the body of the stock
to weight the anchor. Those found at Takashima are only roughly finished
and made of two stones. More easily and quickly completed than their
longer, more finished counterparts, they are not as strong as the single
stone anchors. It may be that these hastily fabricated anchors contributed
to the fleet's demise in the storm that dashed Kublai's hopes for the
conquest of Japan.
The weapons
recovered from the site include bundles of iron arrow tips or crossbow
bolts, spearheads, and more than 80 swords and sabers. During one dive, I saw
a Mongol helmet upright on the bottom, fish swimming in and out of its
projecting brow. Close to the helmet was perhaps the most amazing discovery
yet made--tetsuhau or ceramic projectile bomb. KOSUWA has recovered
six of these from the wreck. They are the world's earliest known exploding
projectiles and the earliest direct archaeological evidence of seagoing
ordnance.
Chinese
alchemists invented gunpowder around A.D. 300, and by 1100 huge paper bombs
much like giant firecrackers were being used in battle. Chinese sources
refer to catapult-launched exploding projectiles in 1221, but some
historians have argued that the references date to later rewritings of the
sources. In his recent book In Little Need of Divine Intervention,
which analyzes two Japanese scrolls that depict the Mongol invasion, Bowdoin College historian Thomas
Conlan suggests that a scene showing a samurai falling from his horse as a
bomb explodes over him was a later addition. Conlan's research masterfully
refutes many of the traditional myths and commonly held perceptions of the
invasion, downplaying the number of ships and troops involved and arguing
that it was not the storms but the Japanese defenders ashore, as well as
confusion and a lack of coordination, that thwarted the khan's two
invasions. But his suggestion that the exploding bomb is an anachronism has
now been demolished by solid archaeological evidence. Moreover, when the
Japanese x-rayed two intact bombs, they found that one was filled just with
gunpowder while the other was packed with gunpowder and more than a dozen
square pieces of iron shrapnel intended to cut down the enemy.
|
Ceramic bombs found on the 1281 shipwreck, left, prove the
existence of these early explosive shells. Some historians had speculated
that their depiction on scrolls recording the invasions was a later
addition. (KOSUWA)
|
The site has
yielded fragmentary human remains. A cranium, resting where a body had
perhaps been pushed face down into the seabed, and a pelvis, possibly from
the same individual, now rest in the conservation lab awaiting analysis.
This state-of-the-art lab, at the Takashima Museum of Folk History and
Culture, is filled with containers of freshwater in which artifacts rest.
Initial study of the artifacts has revealed new information about the
khan's forces. Only one percent of the finds can be attributed to a
Mongolian origin; the rest are Chinese. The Mongol invasion was Mongol only
in name and in the allegiance of the invading sailors and troops.
The future
of the finds is uncertain. While the excavation has been fully funded by
the Japanese government, it has only committed funding for conservation of
ten percent of the collection. For now, the rest will remain in freshwater
tanks. The existing museum is too small to house all of the artifacts, and Japan remains firmly
gripped by economic recession. Given widespread interest, and the
significance of the discovery, perhaps the time has come for an
international funding effort to assist the expensive but archaeologically
and culturally rewarding work being accomplished there.
Takashima Island's local government
is interested in further exploration of the lost fleet of Kublai Khan, and
Kenzo Hayashida and his colleagues continue to work off the island's
shores. Hayashida believes, like Thomas Conlan and other historians, that
the khan's fleet size was exaggerated, and that hundreds, not thousands, of
wrecks lie buried here. Even so, the remains now emerging from the mud and
water are one of the greatest underwater archaeological discoveries of our
time, providing critical new information about Asian seafaring and military
technology, as well as an invasion crushed by a legendary storm.
|