DEPREDATORY BANDITS

Late night reading: the history of Tsushima Island (對馬 'deui maa"), the So Clan (宗氏 'jung si'), and the Mongol Invasions (元寇 Genkou, 'yuen kau'; "Mongol Depradations"). One character which must be remembered, and promptly forgotten, is 倭。 It's a loaded term. Another term that has to crop up is the Battle of Sekigahara (關ヶ原の戰い Sekigahara no Tatakai, 'gwaan ga yuen no jin'; 海原之戰 'hoi yuen ji jin').

The general term for Mongol Depradations, in Chinese, is 蒙古征戰 ('mung gu jing jin').

Reading history is always a judgemental endeavour; losers and illiterates rarely leave records.
At least not ones that are well-thought-out, and calculated for effect.


What prompted this was a Japanese song about the Mongol defeat at Tsushima.


Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese look upon the Mongols with any great favour, and the only reason that Europeans and Americans are less jaundiced is a greater sense of distance; we consider ourselves further from their brazen effrontery.



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