Which khan's fleet was wrecked twice by 'kamikaze' typhoons?

Kublai Khan sent fleets against Japan twice. The first, in 1274, landed at Hakata Bay, fought a day, withdrew to the ships, and lost a large part of them to a storm overnight. The second, in 1281, was on a different scale entirely: something like 4,400 vessels and well over 100,000 men, the largest seaborne invasion attempted anywhere before the twentieth century.

The Japanese had used the seven years between them well, building a stone wall along the invasion beaches and harassing the anchored fleet with small night raids. The Mongols were still stuck offshore in August when a typhoon came through and destroyed the fleet. The Japanese called it kamikaze, the divine wind, and the phrase was pulled out of storage in 1944 for the pilots of the Special Attack Units.

Winning was expensive even so. The shogunate had fought a purely defensive war, so there was no conquered land to distribute to the warriors who had ruined themselves answering the call, and the resentment that produced is part of why the Kamakura regime fell fifty years later.

Winning was expensive too. The shogunate had fought a purely defensive war, so there was no conquered land to hand out to the warriors who had ruined themselves answering the call. The resentment that produced is part of why the Kamakura regime fell fifty years later.