The Mongol invaders and their final defeat

While Nichiren’s thought was soaring on in such visions of the coming Church, the Mongol menace also engaged his mind. The “Warning to the God Hachiman,” above cited, was indeed meant to be an emphatic monition – now, not to the prejudiced people, but to the god who was believed to be the guardian of the country, and an embodiment of the nation’s militant virtues. Indeed, while the “Warning” was in hand, the Mongols were busily engaged in preparations for sending their “Invincible Armada,” as the last attempt upon the island nation. When, in the year following (1281), the prophet committed to writing the “Three Great Mysteries,” as his spiritual legacy, the armada had already left the shores of China and were swarming along the Korean coasts. One month later (in the fifth month), four thousand warships appeared on Japanese waters, and came to anchor in the bay of Hakata, in western Japan. The excitement was great, and undoubtedly the news reached the prophet’s hermitage. The circular sent by him to his followers is very characteristic.

The circular is dated the sixteenth of the sixth month, 1281, when the defenders on the western coasts were struggling against the arrows and bombs of the Mongols. The expression is so terse that it can be taken in more than one way, especially when we remember that Nichiren had always seemed to hail the Mongols as an instrument to awaken the nation. But one thing is clear; in this letter he used for the first time the phrase, “the Little Mongols,” the opposite of the usual designation, the “Great Mongols.” The Mongols, physically great and formidable, were little from the prophet’s point of view; while, as is evident from his previous writings, the actual Japan was for him a degenerate nation, doomed to ruin, but the ideal Japan was great and impregnable.

It was on the first of the intercalary seventh month of 1281 that a storm destroyed the Mongol armada, which had not effected a landing, and thus the invasion proved a total failure. On the very day when the Mongol warships were being shattered by the typhoon, Nichiren wrote to a warrior disciple, who was probably setting out to join the defenders, saying:

“When the Mongols sent their ultimatum, coming on top of the previous calamities of earthquakes, etc., I gave warning to the authorities, but they did not give heed. Now, Nichiren’s predictions are being fulfilled, and the battle is raging. All the people of the country will certainly become in this present life Asuras (furious spirits), and fall hereafter to the nethermost hells. You may die in the battle. … Yet be sure that we shall meet in the Paradise of Vulture Peak! Even if you should share in the calamity, your soul is in communion with Buddha’s soul. In this life you are participating in the life of the ‘furious spirits,’ and yet you will surely be born in Buddha’s land after death.”

All other letters written during a few months after the great event are full of this sentiment. The prophet seems not to attach much importance to the “great victory” won by the help of a storm, which was believed by the people to have been sent by divine intervention. In one of these letters he says:

“An autumn gale destroyed the enemy’s ships, and now the people boast of a great success, as if the commander of the enemy had been captured; while the priests pretend that it was due to the efficacy of their mysteries. Ask them whether they took the head of the Mongol king? Whatever they may say, make no other reply than this!”

In reality, the defeat of the invaders was of momentous consequence; most of the soldiers were drowned, though the story that only three men escaped must be an exaggeration. The people rejoiced, and the priests gloried in their achievements in prayer; but Nichiren looked at the event with a cool aloofness, probably thinking how remote the fulfilment of his ideal was. He still insisted that the nation could not really be saved, except by complete conversion.

Nichiren may have been mistaken, if he thought that the success of an invasion by the Mongols would prove the truth of his predictions; but he was certainly right in not being elated by the victory. He was farsighted enough to recognize that the curse that rested on the nation was a long way from being removed by the defeat of the Mongols. Historians know today that the evils of the superstitious mysteries against which Nichiren fulminated increased in consequence of the unexpected end of the Mongol armada, because the authorities were themselves too superstitious to resist the exorbitant demands made by the Shinto and Buddhist priests and sorcerers for further contributions toward the support of mysteries and supplications, on which much wealth was lavished. Priests were prized more highly for their prayers than the fighters who had prevented the Mongols from landing and kept them for three months on the sea, until the storm came. Measures for defense against future attacks, were concerted; but unwisely, from the strategic point of view, these measures were confined to the land, little attention being paid to the navy. Yet a worse thing was the extravagant outlay in building and decorating the temples and shrines of those deities who were believed to have rescued the country; the expenditure on them being estimated to have been much more than for any other purpose. Discontent was growing among the warriors, financial difficulties became more and more serious, and the final result was the collapse of the Hōjō government in 1333, which was followed by social disintegration. The defense was successful only by chance. Subsequent events proved that that “miraculous” relief was largely responsible for the age of war which lasted three hundred years after the fall of the Hōjōs.

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NICHIREN: THE BUDDHIST PROPHET

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