History of the Japanese seafaring
The history of Japanese seafaring goes back to early contacts with states on the Asian mainland at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Japanese activities at sea reached their first high point in the 16th and 17th centuries in the era of the Namban trade , a time of intensive cultural exchange with the European powers.
Two centuries of stagnation followed in the subsequent Edo period , a time when the country was largely closed off from the outside world ( Sakoku ). When the US forced the country to open up to foreign trade in 1854, the Japanese navy was technically inferior to the western navies. These events were one of the triggers of the Meiji Restoration , a time of volatile modernization and industrialization, accompanied by a transfer of power from the shoguns back to the emperor . In 1920, the Imperial Japanese Navy was finally the third largest in the world, and at the beginning of World War II it was possibly the most modern in the world.
The success story of the Imperial Navy, with its victories against sometimes strongly superior opponents such as in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 , ended with its almost complete destruction in 1945 and its official dissolution after the end of the war. Today's Japanese Navy was therefore re-established as the Japanese Maritime Defense Forces under the guise of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces . It is one of the first navies in the world in terms of budget, but is not offensive like the Imperial Navy.
Prehistoric time
Japan appears during the last ice age around 20,000 BC. To have had a mainland connection to the Asian mainland, on the one hand by the icing of the sea, on the other hand by a drop of the sea level by 80 to 100 m. This allowed the exchange of animal and plant species and led to the first human settlements of the Jōmon culture . After that, Japan became an isolated island area that only had contact with the mainland through sporadic sea voyages. The shortest sea route, apart from the rough north route from Hokkaidō to Sakhalin , consisted of two sections of open sea, each about 50 km between the main island of Kyushu and Tsushima and between Tsushima and Korea .
Various influences from the direction of the Pacific were also discussed, as various cultural and even genetic traces point to partial Pacific origins, possibly in connection with the Austronesian expansion.
Early history
Legation trips to Japan by the early North Chinese Wei and Jin dynasties recorded that some Japanese claimed an origin of "Taibo from the state of Wu " and were refugees after the fall of this state in the 5th century BC. Be. History books have records of Wu Taibo who is believed to have sent 4,000 men and 4,000 women to Japan.
Yayoi period
The first significant seafaring contacts begin with the Yayoi period in the 3rd century BC. When rice cultivation and metallurgy were introduced from the continent.
The looting of pirates in Silla (Japanese 新 羅 Shiragi ), one of the three kingdoms of Korea in the year 14, recorded in the Samguk Sagi , is the earliest recorded Japanese military action. According to this source, pirates from Wa (Japan) looted 100 ships along the southeastern coastal areas of Shiragi . The Japanese were eventually driven out by the Korean army.
Yamato time
During the Yamato period , Japan had intense maritime relations with mainland Asia. This included the transport of troops and the transfer of knowledge and technology from Korea to Japan, which began at the latest with the beginning of the Kofun period in the 3rd century.
Legend has it that Princess Jingū was an invasion of Korea during the 3rd century. According to the inscriptions on the Gwanggaeto stele , the Wa (Japanese) crossed the sea to the Korean Peninsula in 391 and supported the Silla Empire in the fight against the Goguryeo Empire . The Battle of Baekgang (Japanese 白 村 江 , Battle of Hakusukinoe ) took place in Korea in 663 . Japan sent 32,000 soldiers and possibly up to 1,000 ships across the sea to Korea to support the declining kingdom of Baekje . However, they were defeated by Goguryeo, the combined armies of the Chinese Tang Dynasty and the Korean Silla Dynasty.
middle Ages
Large-scale naval battles with more than 1000 warships are documented from the 12th century. The decisive battle of the Gempei War was the 1185 naval battle of Dan-no-ura between fleets of the Minamoto and Taira clans . These battles consisted of an initial exchange of fire over long distances with a bow and arrow, which turned into a man-to-man fight with sword and dagger.
Mongol invasions (1274–1281)
The first significant sources of Japanese naval attacks against other Asian powers appear in reports of the Mongol invasions of Japan by Kubilai Khan in 1281. Japan then had no navy that could seriously challenge the Mongolian navy, so most of the fighting took place on land. Groups of samurai on small coastal boats boarded, occupied and burned several ships belonging to the offshore Mongolian navy. Most of these attacks took place under cover of night and contributed to the demoralization of the Mongols waiting for reinforcements and their auxiliaries.
Wako piracy (13th-16th centuries)
Japanese pirates ( wakō ) became very active from the 13th to the 16th century . They plundered the shores of the Chinese Empire . The first foray of the Wakō is documented from the summer of 1223 on the south coast of Goryeo . At the height of piracy around 1350, organized fleets of 300 to 500 ships with several hundred mounted men and several thousand foot soldiers raided the coasts of China. For the next half century, starting from Iki and Tsushima , they devastated the southern half of Goryeo. In the worst decade between 1376 and 1385, no fewer than 174 pirate raids on Korea were recorded. The activity didn't end until the 1580s after it was banned by Toyotomi Hideyoshi .
Official trade missions, such as the Tenryujibune , were also sent to China around 1341.
Warring States Period (15th to 16th centuries)
Japan made greater efforts in military shipbuilding during the War of the Warring States ( Sengoku-jidai ) in the 16th century, as the feudal rulers built huge coastal navies with several hundred ships in their struggle for supremacy. The largest of these ships were known as the Atakebune . Around this time, Japan also appears to have developed one of the first iron-armored warships in history. Oda Nobunaga , a Japanese daimyo , had six iron-covered Ōatakebune ( large atakebune ) built in 1576 . These ships were also called Tekkōsen ( 鉄 甲 船 , literally iron-armored ships ) and were armed with multiple cannons and large-caliber rifles to fight the large but unarmored wooden ships of the enemy. With these ships Nobunaga defeated the Mori Navy in the mouth of the Kizu River near Osaka in 1578 and began a successful sea blockade. However, the oatakebune are viewed more as floating fortresses than real warships and are only used in coastal waters.
Contacts with Europe
The first Europeans reached Japan in 1543 on Chinese junks , the Portuguese reached Japan a short time later with their own ships. At this time, there had been a trade exchange between Portugal and Goa since around 1515 , consisting of three to four carracks , which left Lisbon with silver as a cargo to buy cotton and spices in India . Only one of these ships went to China to exchange silver for Chinese silk.
Therefore the cargo of the first Portuguese ships (usually 4 smaller ships per year) consisted almost entirely of Chinese goods, such as silk and china. These goods were in great demand among the Japanese, but as a punishment for the earlier pirate attacks by the Japanese Wokou pirates on China, they were forbidden from any contact with the Chinese Empire. The Portuguese ( 南蛮 Namban , literally: southern barbarians ) therefore seized the opportunity to act as middlemen in the East Asian trade.
Since the acquisition of Macau in 1557 and its formal recognition as a trading partner by the Chinese, the Portuguese crown began to regulate trade to Japan by annually selling the "captaincy" to the highest bidder in Japan and thus in principle exclusive trading rights to a single carrack per year awarded to Japan. These carracks were very large ships, usually between 1,000 and 1,500 tons. They were usually two to three times the size of a galleon or junk.
This trade continued with brief interruptions until 1638, when it was banned by Japan on the grounds that the ships were smuggling Christian priests into Japan.
The Portuguese trade was made more and more by Chinese smugglers, Japanese red-sealed ships (from around 1592, around ten ships per year), Spanish ships from Manila (since 1600, around one ship per year), the Dutch (since 1609) and the English (since 1613, about one ship a year) bypassed. There were also some Japanese who traveled abroad on foreign ships, such as: B. Christopher and Cosmas , who crossed the Pacific in 1587 on a Spanish galleon and then went to Europe with Thomas Cavendish .
The Dutch, who by the Japanese instead Namban rather Komo ( 紅毛 , literally red hair ) were called, arrived in Japan for the first time in 1600 on the ship Liefde one. Your navigator was William Adams , the first Englishman to reach Japan. 1605 two members of the team were the Liefde of Tokugawa Ieyasu to Pattani sent to Dutch traders to Japan to invite. The head of the Dutch trading post in Pattani, Victor Sprinckel, refused because he was too busy with the Portuguese counterparties in Southeast Asia. In 1609, however, the Dutchman Jacques Specx arrived in Hirado with two ships and, through Adam's mediation, received trading privileges from Tokugawa Ieyasu.
The Dutch also engaged in piracy and naval warfare to weaken Portuguese and Spanish seafaring in the Pacific and ended up becoming the only Europeans who were allowed access to Japan via the small enclave of Dejima for the next two centuries from 1638 .
Invasion of Korea and Ryūkyū
In 1592 and again in 1598, Japan invaded Korea in the so-called Imjin War with an army of 160,000 men and had several victories in the country. They were about to complete the conquest of the Korean peninsula when the Chinese Ming Dynasty army stepped in and united with the Korean army to counter-attack. Japan's navy suffered several major defeats against the Korean navy. The Korean Navy also owned iron-armored turtle ships that would play an important role in later battles. The main reasons for the failure of the invasions were Japan's defeat at sea, the difficulty of supplying the troops on land and the death of the driving force behind the invasions, Toyotomi Hideyoshi . From 1592 on, the commander-in-chief of Toyotomi's fleet was Kuki Yoshitaka , and his flagship was the 33 m long Nihonmaru .
In 1609 the daimyo of Satsuma conquered the southern islands of the kingdom of Ryūkyū (now Okinawa ) with a fleet of 13 junks and 2,500 samurai, thereby securing supremacy on the islands.
Overseas trade (16th - 17th centuries)
Japan built its first large, ocean-going ships at the beginning of the 17th century, after contacts with the western states during the "period of the Namban trade". In 1604, the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered the navigator William Adams and his comrades to build Japan's first western-style sailing ship in Ito on the east coast of the Izu Peninsula . An 80-ton ship was completed and the Shogun ordered a larger 120-ton ship to be built the following year. Both ships were a bit smaller than the 150 t Liefde , the ship with which Adams came to Japan. After Adams, Ieyasu came on board to view it and was very pleased with it. The ship was named the San Buena Ventura and was loaned to shipwrecked Spanish sailors for their return to Mexico in 1610.
In 1613 the built daimyo of Sendai in coordination with the Tokugawa shogunate the ship Date Maru , a galleon of 500 tons. This transported a Japanese embassy to America, which then also visited Europe.
From 1604 onwards, a total of about 350 Red Seal ships, usually armed and using some Western technology, were sent from the Bafuku on trade, mainly to Southeast Asia .
Japanese ships and samurai helped the Portuguese defend Malaca against the Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelief in 1606 . Several armed ships and samurai of the Japanese adventurer Yamada Nagamasa played a military role in Siam (now Thailand). The English adventurer William Adams, who was also involved in the trade in the red seal ships, stated that the Japanese were very steadfast sailors.
Planned invasion of the Philippines
The Tokugawa Shogunate planned an invasion of Spanish East India for some time in order to put an end to the Spanish policy of expansion in Asia and their support for Christian factions in Japan. In November 1637 it informed Nicolas Couckebacker , the head of the Dutch East India Company , of its plan. About 10,000 samurai were prepared for the expedition and the Dutch promised four warships and two yachts to support the Japanese junkies against the Spanish galleons. The plans were abandoned at the last moment because of the Christian Shimabara rebellion in Japan in December 1637.
Sakoku (1640 to 1840)
Dutch cooperation in this and other matters meant that they remained the only Europeans allowed to have contact with Japan for centuries to come.
Japan now pursued the policy of sakoku (closure), which forbade contact with the West, sought to exterminate Christianity and forbade the construction of ocean-going ships with the penalty of death. The size of ships was limited by law and building regulations that limited their seaworthiness (such as a large opening in the stern of the ship) were introduced. Seafarers who were shipwrecked on foreign coasts were banned from returning to Japan on the death penalty, and foreign shipwrecked on Japan's coasts were also facing the death penalty.
A small Dutch trading post in Dejima in Nagasaki was the only permitted contact with the West through which the Japanese could obtain at least limited information about the scientific and technical progress of the West. This formed a collection of knowledge known as rangaku .
In the 19th century there were many individual attempts by expanding Western powers to end the isolation of Japan. American, Russian, and French ships attempted to establish ties with Japan, but were turned down.
In 1778 a trader from Yakutsk named Pavel Lebedew-Lastoschkin arrived with a small expedition in Hokkaidō . He brought gifts and asked in vain for trade relations. In 1787 the Frenchman La Perouse sailed Japanese waters. He visited the Ryūkyū Islands and the strait between Hokkaidō and Honshū , which got his name. Four years later, in 1791, two American ships were under the explorer John Kendrick for 11 days on the island of Kii-oshima south of the Kii peninsula . He is the first American known to have visited Japan. Apparently he planted an American flag and claimed the islands for America, but there are no known reports of his visit to Japan.
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From 1797 to 1809 several American ships flying the Dutch flag came to Nagasaki for trade. This was done at the request of the Dutch, who were unable to send their own ships because of their conflict with Great Britain in the Napoleonic Wars . In 1797 the US captain William Robert Stewart was sent to Nagasaki by the Dutch in Batavia with the ship Eliza of New York with a cargo of Dutch goods. In 1803 he returned to the port of Nagasaki aboard The Emperor of Japan (the stolen and renamed Eliza of New York ) and tried unsuccessfully to trade through the Dutch enclave of Dejima.
Another American captain, John Derby (1741-1812) from Salem , tried unsuccessfully to open up Japan to the opium trade .
A Russian envoy, Nikolai Rezanov , came to Nagasaki in 1804 to promote trade relations. The Bafuku refused this request and the Russians attacked Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands over the next three years , which is why the Bakufu built defenses in Ezo . In 1808 the English warship HMS Phaeton , which was hunting Dutch ships in the Pacific, sailed into the port of Nagasaki and demanded and received supplies at gunpoint. Three years later, Russian sea lieutenant Vasily Golownin landed on Kunashiri Island and was captured by the Bafuku and imprisoned for two years.
In 1825 the Bafuku followed a suggestion by Takahashi Kageyasu and issued an edict to expel foreign ships ( Ikokusen uchiharairei , also known as Ninen nashi , or “no second thought” law), which instructed the coastal authorities to allow foreigners to come to the coast came imprisoning or killing without exception.
literature
- CR Boxer: The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650. 1993, ISBN 1-85754-035-2 .
- Pierre Delorme: Les Grandes Batailles de l'Histoire, Port-Arthur 1904. Socomer Editions.
- Paul S. Dull: A Battle History of The Imperial Japanese Navy. 1978, ISBN 0-85059-295-X .
- David C. Evans, Mark R. Peattie: Kaigun: strategy, tactics, and technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1997, ISBN 0-87021-192-7 .
- Robert Gardiner (Ed.): Steam, Steel and Shellfire. The Steam Warship 1815-1905. 2001, ISBN 0-7858-1413-2 .
- Christopher Howe: The origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy, Development and technology in Asia from 1540 to the Pacific War. The University of Chicago Press 1996, ISBN 0-226-35485-7 .
- Bernard Ireland: Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century. 1996, ISBN 0-00-470997-7 .
- DJ Lyon: World War II warships. Excalibur Books, 1976, ISBN 0-85613-220-9 .
- Nagazumi Yōko ( 永 積 洋子 ): 朱 印 船 . ( Shuinsen , German Red Seal Ships ) ISBN 4-642-06659-4
- Tōgō Shrine, Tōgō Association ( 東 郷 神社 ・ 東 郷 会 ): 図 説 東 郷 平 八郎 、 目 で 見 る 明治 の 海軍 . ( Zusetsu Tōgō Heihachirō, me de miru Meiji no kaigun , German Tōgō Heihachirō in diagrams, Meiji marine to view )
- 潜水 艦 大作 戦 . ( Sensuikan daisakusen , German great submarine battles ), Jimbutsu-Verlag ( 新人物 従 来 社 )
Individual evidence
- ^ K. Jack Bauer: A Maritime History of the United States. The Role of America's Seas and Waterways . University of South Carolina Press, 1988., p. 57