page_title: Naval history of Japan
section_title: Mongol invasions (1274–1281)
hierarchical_section_title: Naval history of Japan / Medieval period / Mongol invasions (1274–1281)
context_page_description: The naval history of Japan can be said to begin in early interactions with states on the Asian continent in the early centuries of the 1st millennium, reaching a pre-modern peak of activity during the 16th century, a time of cultural exchange with European powers and extensive trade with the Asian mainland. After over two centuries of relative seclusion under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan's naval technologies were seen to be no match for Western navies when the country was forced by American intervention in 1854 to abandon its maritime restrictions. This and other events led to the Meiji Restoration, a period of frantic modernization and industrialization accompanied by the re-ascendence of the Emperor, making the Imperial Japanese Navy the third largest navy in the world by 1920, and arguably the most modern at the brink of World War II.
  The Imperial Japanese Navy's history of successes, sometimes against much more powerful foes as in the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War and the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, ended with the navy's almost complete annihilation in 1945 against the United States Navy, and official dissolution at the end of the conflict.
context_section_description: The first major references to Japanese naval actions against other Asian powers occur in the accounts of the Mongol invasions of Japan by Kublai Khan in 1281. Japan had no navy which could seriously challenge the Mongol navy, so most of the action took place on Japanese land. Groups of samurai, transported on small coastal boats, are recorded to have boarded, taken over and burned several ships of the Mongol navy.
caption: Japanese samurai boarding Mongol ships in 1281. Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba (蒙古襲来絵詞), circa 1293.
exif: {}