Reflecting the Past Har var d East Asian Monogr aphs 433

Azuma kagami
(The Mirror of the East)
Author:
unknown
Date:
circa 1290s
Language:
hentai kanbun
Preface:
no
Setting:
none stated; the implied center is Kamakura
Time covered:
the beginning of the Genpei War (1180)–the abdication 
of the sixth shogun, Munetaka (1242–72); fifty-two scrolls survive, with 
some gaps in coverage.
Nomori no kagami
(The Mirror of the Watchman in the Fields)
Author:
often attributed to Minamoto no Arifusa
Date:
1295
Language:
wabun
Preface:
yes
Setting:
Engyōji Temple (Harima)
Time covered:
N/A
The Mongol fleet arrived in Japan in 1274, after diplomatic overtures to 
establish “friendly relations” (
tsūkō
) proved futile.
1
According to the account 
1. For a distillation of the epistles and embassies from the Mongols and their pen-
insular support, see Saeki Koji, “Mōko shūrai ikō no Nihon no tai-Kōrai kankei.” 
Ch a pt er 4
Moving 
Mirrors
Ordering the Past in the Wake 
of the Mongols

---

198
Moving Mirrors
contained in one version of the 
Hachiman gudōkun
(A Simple Teaching 
on the Hachiman Deity), they struck first at Tsushima, on the fifth day 
of the tenth month, mere hours after flames had spontaneously and omi-
nously burst forth from the Hachiman deity’s local “temporary shrine” 
(
karidono
).
2
Nine days later, Mongol forces attacked at Iki Island and 
then moved on to Chikuzen, where fighting broke out on the twentieth 
of the following month. There, the account reports that Japanese forces 
met a deafening noise of drums, gongs, and launched projectiles that 
threw their horses into confusion, as well as deadly weapons that included 
poison-tipped arrows.
3
It describes the Mongol warriors as able horsemen, 
trained to respond to drum summons, and “strong and brave, galloping 
freely about.”
4
The 
Mōko shūrai ekotoba
(Illustrated Account of the Mon-
gol Invasions) of the late thirteenth century offers a similar, if smaller-
scale, account, featuring vividly rendered bloodied corpses, a wealth of 
weaponry, and severed heads.
5
And although Japanese forces famously 
triumphed in both the 1274 and 1281 invasions, the landings in Hakata 
were violent, bloody, and presumably horrific affairs.
If the Genpei War and its aftermath suggested limitations to impe-
rial authority and a shift in the horizon of expectations for the survivors, 
similar reorientations likely occurred in the wake of the multiple failed 
efforts by the Mongols to breach Japan’s borders. Among the vicissitudes 
of the late thirteenth century, it is these two attempted invasions—above 
Needless to say, “friendly” is a euphemism. For an English-language overview of these 
events, see Zuikei and von Verschuer, “Japan’s Foreign Relations,” 414–16. For a trans-
lation of one of the letters to Japan, see ibid., 428.
2. Hagiwara Tetsuo, “Hachiman gudōkun (kō),” 183. Although 
Hachiman gudōkun
is a hagiography, it nonetheless provides one sense of how the Mongol invasions were 
memorialized in the Japanese imagination in the early fourteenth century. On the date, 
see ibid., 169. Komatsu Shigemi, who also cites this work, dates it to the fifteenth 
century (
Nihon no emaki 13: Mōko shūrai ekotoba
, 134–35).
3. Hagiwara, “Hachiman gudōkun (kō),” 183–84.
4. Hagiwara, “Hachiman gudōkun (kō),” 184.
5. Even allowing for artistic license and the possibility of some self-promotion, 
since the scrolls were commissioned as proof of their subject’s loyal service, the Mongols 
and their conscripts were surely formidable. I follow Komatsu in the dating of the 
scrolls, and my understanding of them—both text and image—derives from Komat-
su’s edition. On the date, see Komatsu,