All six Murakumo-class destroyers arrived in Japan in time to be used during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. All were present at the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the final crucial Battle of Tsushima.

In the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese navy came to understand the combat effectiveness of small, fast torpedo-equipped warships over larger, slower ships equipped with slow-loading and often inaccurate naval artillery. The Ikazuchi class vessels were the first destroyers procured by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Four were ordered under the 1896 fiscal year budget, and an additional two under the 1897 budget. All were ordered from the Yarrow Shipbuilders in Poplar, London, which was considered to be the world's premier builders of destroyers and smaller warships.

Japan also embarked on the construction of destroyers. Following the 1853 arrival of a U.S. naval force under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry, the Japanese looked ...

“A Righteous War to Chastise the Russians: The Night Attack of the Destroyer Force” by Shinohara Kiyooki, 1904 [2000.453] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ikazuchi-class destroyer Sazanami at Yokosuka. Japanese destroyer Sazanami at Yokosuka, 1901

On February 6, 1904, Japan broke off diplomatic relations even as Russia foolishly moved 20,000 troops into Korea. Two evenings later, Togo arrived off Port Arthur with the main part of the Japanese fleet and immediately sent his destroyers into the harbor on a daring night torpedo attack against the Russian battleship-cruiser force anchored in the outer roadstead. Since war had not been formally declared, the Russian ships were brilliantly lit. Racing in, the Japanese small ships fired their torpedoes and sped away before the Russians knew what was happening. Two battleships and a cruiser were hit, and although flooding was controlled and the ships got under way toward the inner ...

The Japanese warrior Takezaki Suenaga attacks Mongol bowmen, though his horse is wounded. A bomb explodes in the air at centre.

An example of tetsuhau, the world's oldest anti-personnel explosive, excavated from a ship wrecked during the battIe. tetsuhau is a primitive Mongol grenade. 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)

Illustration, based on contemporary depictions in scrolls and discoveries from excavation of the Takashima shipwreck, depicts a warship from the Mongol invasion fleet. (KOSUWA)

The attempted Mongol  invasions of Japan.

1274 and 1281.

Date August 14–15, 1281

Location Northern Kyumshum, Japan

Opponents

[1]Japanese

[2]Mongols, with Chinese and Korean auxiliaries

Commander

[1]Unknown

[2]Kublai Khan

Approx. # Troops

[1]Unknown

[2]170,000 men and 4,500 ships

Importance Japanese ...

In the early history of Japan, the samurai were members of the court guard. In the eighth century, with the development of feudal relations, they became vassals of the larger feudal lords, the barons (daimyo) and served as their armed escort, or served the emperor directly. This is the root of their name, samurau meaning to serve.

The drawn-out feudal struggles among the great lords, which began in the twelfth century, loosened the bonds of imperial authority, but also made the samurai influential, turning them into a privileged military caste. Most were tied to the feudal lords, who did not give them land holdings but paid them in kind. The most privileged of the samurai were the bannermen (hatamoto), vassals of the shogun, militarily the strongest feudal lord in Japan, who was the country's true ruler; the emperor was no more than a figurehead. The task of the hatamoto ...

Mongol ships.

Japanese attack ships. Moko Shurai Ekotoba, 1291.

Japanese Defences.

Qubilai’s expeditions against Japan, finally wrecked by the famous kamikaze (divine wind), became great burdens on Mongol-ruled China and Korea. By the 13th century the military government in Kamakura (1185–1333), dominated by the Hojo family, had removed the emperor in Kyoto from actual administration. Japan had no formal relations with the mainland, but Japanese Buddhist pilgrims, merchants, and pirates all regularly crossed the East China Sea.

QUBILAI KHAN (1260–94) first learned of Japan in 1265 from a Korean interpreter. From 1266 to 1272 Qubilai’s repeated dispatch of envoys was stymied first by Korean noncooperation and then by the Hojo family’s refusal to allow the Japanese emperor to receive them. In July 1271 the Korean interpreter Cho Kaesu¢ng first proposed invasion. In November 1274 a fleet under Prince Hindu and the Korean Hong Tagu ...

Imagawa Ryoshun

1412

As you do not understand the Arts of Peace° your skill in the Arts of War° will not, in the end, achieve victory.

You like to roam about, hawking and cormorant fishing, relishing the purposelessness of taking life.

You live in luxury by fleecing the people and plundering the shrines.

To build your own dwelling you razed the pagoda and other buildings of the memorial temple of our ancestors.

You do not distinguish between good and bad behavior of your retainers, but reward or punish them without justice.

You permit yourself to forget the kindness that our lord and father showed us; thus you destroy the principles of loyalty and filial piety.

You do not understand the difference in status between yourself and others; sometimes you make too much of other people, sometimes too little.

You disregard other people’s viewpoints; you bully them and rely on ...

As the Japanese imperial court gradually lost power to military authorities in the countryside, a further distinctive feature of Japanese civilization emerged in the celebration of martial virtues and the warrior class—the samurai—that embodied those values. From the twelfth through the mid-nineteenth century, public life and government in Japan was dominated by the samurai, while their culture and values, known as bushido, expressed the highest ideals of political leadership and of personal conduct. At least in the West, the samurai are perhaps best known for preferring death over dishonor, a posture expressed in seppuku (ritual suicide). But there was much more to bushido than this, for the samurai served not only as warriors but also as bureaucrats—magistrates, land managers, and provincial governors—acting on behalf of their lords (daimyo) or in service to military rulers known as shoguns. Furthermore, although bushido remained a distinctively Japanese cultural expression ...

Shiba Yosimasa

ca. 1400

Wielders of bow and arrow should behave in a manner considerate not only of their own honor, of course, but also of the honor of their descendants. They should not bring on eternal disgrace by solicitude for their limited lives.

That being said, nevertheless to regard your one and only life as like dust or ashes and die when you shouldn’t is to acquire a worthless reputation. A genuine motive would be, for example, to give up your life for the sake of the sole sovereign, or serving under the commander of the military in a time of need; these would convey an exalted name to children and descendants. Something like a strategy of the moment, whether good or bad, cannot raise the family reputation much.

Warriors should never be thoughtless or absentminded but handle all things with forethought. . . .

It is said that good warriors ...

Port Arthur

Port Arthur is the former name of the port city of Lüshun at the tip of China’s Liaodong Peninsula in Liaoning Province, approximately 30 kilometers south of the city of Dalian. Port Arthur takes its name from Royal Navy Lieutenant William C. Arthur, who briefly occupied the harbor in 1858. Port Arthur’s natural harbor and strategic position, commanding the northern Yellow and Bohai Seas, resulted in its fortification in the 1880s by Qing China and its choice as headquarters for the developing Beiyang Fleet. The port played a major role in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 when it was captured by Japanese troops after a short siege. On the strength of its peace settlement with China in 1895, Japan briefly occupied the city along with the Liaodong Peninsula yet was forced to withdraw in response to the Triple Intervention of Russia, France, and Germany. In 1898 ...