Takashima’s Yuan Wrecks: Reading the 1281 Invasion Beneath the Sea

Two invasions must be kept separate: the Bunei invasion of 1274 and the Koan invasion seven years later, in 1281. The Takashima wrecks discussed here concern the later expedition. A picture connected with the earlier fighting cannot simply become an illustration of the same event.

Forces from Yuan and Goryeo crossed the sea, while Japanese defenders responded through coastal fortifications and guarding. During the conflict a violent storm struck the fleet, many ships were lost and the expedition moved toward withdrawal. The storm is central to the account, but does not explain every part of the fighting by itself.

Questions about which vessel broke apart, where it lay and how its remains relate to written events require comparison. The archaeological setting extends beyond Hakata Bay to the southern shore of Takashima, where substantial traces of that wider maritime history survived.

A major development came in autumn 2011, when a research group including Professor Ikeda Yoshifumi of the University of the Ryukyus confirmed a hull off Takashima. The vessel is now referred to as wreck No. 1.

The remains lay in water approximately 23–25 metres deep, with the keel and surrounding hull planking about another metre below the seabed. A keel is a longitudinal member along the bottom of a vessel, often compared with a backbone.

The comparison helps explain the function of the surviving timber, rather than supplying missing parts of the ship. What had been confirmed was a connected portion of structure beneath sediment. The illustration is not the excavation photograph or a measured record of the location.

Another vessel was discovered in October 2014 and confirmed as an invasion wreck in the 2015 investigation. Its lower timber structure survived in good condition, providing evidence for study of the vessel’s construction.

Chinese white-porcelain bowls, brown-glazed pottery jars and tenmoku bowls were also identified. Hull structure and ceramics offer different kinds of evidence at the same site. Recording their positions and character supports consideration of date and function.

Following investigation, wreck No. 2 was reburied and preserved in place. The city describes periodic monitoring to check deterioration. Discovery, investigation and preservation are therefore separate stages; finding the ship did not mean immediately raising it onto land.

The name tetsuhau may suggest a gun to a modern reader, but the Takashima Kanzaki object held by Tokyo National Museum is the ceramic body of a gunpowder weapon. It is not an early depiction of a firearm or a cannon.

Dated to the thirteenth century in the Kamakura period, this example was recovered during the Meiji period. Its contents no longer survive. The museum explains the weapon as originally using fragments such as iron or pottery with an explosive effect; the existing casing and an explanation of former contents remain distinct.

Here the illustration is a photograph of an actual collection object, unlike the surrounding generated scenes. The collection number is G-3308. Modern cataloguing markings visible on the surface are not interpreted as a medieval inscription, and the photograph cannot restore the missing contents.

Matsuura City confirmed wreck No. 3 in October 2024 at a depth of about eighteen metres. Ceramics and metal objects were identified with the hull, and the 2025 fiscal-year investigation confirmed the keel and a joining section. The city says the complete picture remains unresolved.

In April 2026 the city’s board of education announced an ink-inscribed wooden board from the wreck. Hiroshima University’s notice confirms the announcement and scholarly assistance in reading it. This article does not extend that notice into an independent decipherment of the writing or a claim about its exact use.

The new material adds questions and more specific evidence rather than making the whole vessel understood at once. The generated board is not the original find, an inscription facsimile or a translation of confirmed characters.

The sea off Takashima preserved more than a single record announcing victory or defeat. Ship timber, ceramics and weapons illuminate the same broad historical setting from different directions. They make the expedition tangible through the things that carried and accompanied it.

A twelve-metre keel does not show the complete vessel, yet it turns a ship known through words and pictures into physical evidence from a particular sea. Ceramics shift attention toward people aboard, while new discoveries remind the reader that much remains outside the confirmed picture.

The invasion need not end in the retelling at a storm scene. Following surviving ships and objects brings the wider maritime event back into view, with measured findings and interpretation kept distinct. The account does not add a total for lost ships, a claim that all crews died or an explanation based solely on poor construction.

Image note: explanatory scenes use AI-generated conceptual images and are not excavation photographs or precise hull reconstructions. The tetsuhau and scroll-copy images are collection materials with separate institutional credits and sources in their captions.