254 years before the Mongol invasions, Japan had already come under large-scale attack from across the sea
The third year of Kannin (1019).
In Kyoto, Fujiwara no Michinaga’s power had reached its very peak.
In the tenth month of the previous year, 1018, on the night his daughter Ishi became empress consort to Emperor Go-Ichijo, Michinaga composed the poem
“This world, I think, is my world entire; like the full moon, I see no lack in it.”
It was the most brilliant moment of Fujiwara regency rule.
And yet, barely half a year later.
Far from Kyoto, out on the western sea, a fleet of more than fifty ships appeared.
Their targets were Tsushima, Iki, and northern Kyushu.
The men who came ashore stormed into settlements, killed people, burned homes, seized food, and carried off the survivors onto their ships.
On the toll of the incident as a whole, the Yamakawa Dictionary of Japanese History gives figures of
365 dead and 1,289 abducted.
Other sources put the death toll above 400, so the numbers vary. Even so, there is no doubt this was a large-scale raid that carried off more than a thousand people.
Later generations would come to call this event
the Toi Invasion.
255 years before the first Mongol invasion of 1274, and 262 years before the second, in 1281.
Heian Japan had already come under large-scale attack by sea from the continent.
Who, exactly, were “the Toi”?
“Toi” was neither the name of a country nor the formal name of an ethnic group.
The term originated in Goryeo, used there to refer to foreign peoples, and Japan adopted the same word.
The Toi who attacked Japan in 1019 were primarily a Jurchen group, living in what is now northeastern China and the Russian maritime provinces.
The Jurchens are best known for founding the Jin dynasty under Wanyan Aguda roughly a century later, in 1115.
But the Toi of 1019 should not simply be equated with the later Jin armies.
At the time, part of the Jurchen population had also been raiding the coast of Goryeo repeatedly.
And in 1019, one such group crossed the sea toward the Japanese archipelago.
Their goal was not the conquest of Japan.
It was plunder — people and goods.
Which is why they moved fast.
Attack a settlement. Seize food. Capture people.
Then move on to the next place.
The Toi Invasion was, in character, a very different event from the later Mongol invasions, which aimed at seizing territory.
More than fifty ships — what the number reveals
Fairly specific records survive on the scale of the fleet.
More than fifty ships.
Each vessel measured roughly 8 to 12 hiro in length, with 30 to 40 oars apiece.
Records also give a crew of 30 to 40, or in some cases 50 to 60, men per ship.
Once ashore, men carrying bows paired with men carrying shields, forming ten to twenty such units that moved through the hills and fields.
This was clearly a highly organized raiding force.
On the Japanese side, there was no standing navy to intercept this fleet at sea.
Whichever place came under attack simply had to respond on its own.
And the first target was an island at the very western edge of the Japanese archipelago.
Late March — Tsushima is struck first
Late in the third month of the third year of Kannin.
The Toi fleet appeared off Tsushima.
Present-day Tsushima City, Nagasaki Prefecture.
Roughly 50 kilometers from the Korean peninsula, it stood at the very front line of maritime traffic linking Japan to the continent.
A gateway for trade and diplomacy.
And also the first land to face any attack from a foreign enemy.
Once ashore, the Toi killed residents, attacked homes, and took people captive.
Records show they even killed and ate cattle, horses, and dogs.
They seized grain as well, and loaded their captives onto their ships.
Having struck Tsushima, the Toi pressed further south.
Their next target: Iki.
Here, the fighting grew even fiercer.
Fujiwara no Masatada, Governor of Iki, leads 147 men into battle
Iki had a provincial governor responsible for the island’s administration.
Fujiwara no Masatada, Governor of Iki.
On receiving word of the Toi attack, Masatada did not choose to flee.
He gathered troops.
Their number: 147.
And he moved to meet the Toi head-on.
His enemy was an armed force that had arrived in more than fifty ships.
The gap in strength was enormous.
In the end, Masatada’s force was annihilated.
Fujiwara no Masatada himself was killed.
On Iki, large numbers of residents were killed, and even greater numbers were carried off onto the ships.
The Nihon Dai Hyakka Zensho records that, in the aftermath,
a report stated that only 35 people remained on the island.
This was damage severe enough to nearly empty an entire island of its people.
That figure alone shows the Toi Invasion was never merely “a minor clash with a foreign ship.”
Even the temple’s monks took up arms
Fujiwara no Masatada was not the only one who resisted on Iki.
The island was home to Iki Kokubun-ji, its provincial temple.
Resistance against the Toi broke out here as well.
At its center was a monk named Jokaku.
Under attack from the Toi, the temple’s people fought back.
Jokaku eventually escaped the island, crossed to Chikuzen, and warned Dazaifu of the crisis.
The governor killed in battle. Fighting breaking out even at a temple.
Residents killed and captured.
On Iki in 1019, the entire island became a battlefield.
And the Toi did not stop at Iki.
Their fleet pressed further south.
Toward the Kyushu mainland.
The Toi land in Chikuzen
Having struck Tsushima and Iki, the Toi bore down on Chikuzen Province.
The present-day northwestern part of Fukuoka Prefecture.
The Toi pushed into Ito, Shima, and Sawara Districts, continuing their plunder.
They advanced as far as Noko Island as well.
Burning homes. Seizing food. Capturing people.
Records show that, across the incident as a whole, 45 houses were burned down.
If the area around Hakata Bay was left to be ravaged like this, beyond it lay Dazaifu, the seat of the court’s rule over Kyushu.
Here, one nobleman moved.
Fujiwara no Takaie.
No account of the Toi Invasion is complete without him.
(A full profile of Fujiwara no Takaie is available in English here.)
Fujiwara no Takaie — the man who caused trouble in Kyoto had become the one responsible for defending Kyushu
Fujiwara no Takaie was born in the second year of Tengen (979).
His father was the regent Fujiwara no Michitaka. His elder brother was Fujiwara no Korechika.
His elder sister was Fujiwara no Teishi, who became empress consort to Emperor Ichijo.
Put simply, he was the younger brother of the Teishi whom Sei Shonagon served, as chronicled in The Pillow Book.
In other words, Takaie was born into one of the very finest houses even within the Fujiwara clan.
And yet, from a young age, he had a fiery temperament.
The second year of Chotoku (996).
Takaie and his elder brother Korechika caused the incident in which arrows were shot at Retired Emperor Kazan.
This became known as the Chotoku Incident (the attack on Retired Emperor Kazan is available in English here).
He was about 17 at the time.
Because of this incident, Takaie was demoted and sent off as acting governor of Izumo.
He later returned to political life.
And eventually took up the post of Dazai Gon no Sochi, deputy governor-general of Dazaifu, in Kyushu.
Then, in the third year of Kannin (1019), word reached the 40-year-old Takaie that “raiders have come from across the sea.”
Takaie, born in 979, had been demoted in the Chotoku Incident of 996, and, after his return to office, faced the Toi Invasion in 1019 as Dazai Gon no Sochi.
Why was Takaie in Dazaifu?
There is a well-known story behind why Takaie ended up in Dazaifu.
An eye disease.
Takaie suffered from an eye ailment, and is said to have asked for the Dazaifu posting himself, hoping for treatment from continental physicians who had traveled to Kyushu.
Seen from Kyoto, Dazaifu was a distant place.
For Takaie too, this was probably never meant to be the defining posting of his life.
And yet this posting is exactly what carved his name into Japanese history.
1019.
The man who happened to hold the position responsible for defending Japan’s western frontier was Fujiwara no Takaie.
“Waiting for orders from Kyoto” was never an option
Word that Tsushima and Iki had been attacked reached Dazaifu.
Takaie sent urgent word to the central government.
At the same time, he moved to organize the defense on the ground.
This point matters.
Word travels from Dazaifu to Kyoto. Senior nobles gather in Kyoto. A response is decided. Orders are sent back to Kyushu.
All the while, the Toi keep moving.
The enemy would not wait for the court’s procedures.
Takaie moved his forces on his own authority, based on judgment made on the ground.
He sent Dazaifu officials to the coastal defense posts, organized the armed men of Kyushu, and moved to meet the enemy.
This decision changed the course of the fighting in Chikuzen dramatically.
Kyushu already had “men who could fight”
At the core of the force Takaie commanded were officials tied to Dazaifu and the provincial government, along with armed local families with a base in the region.
One of them was Okura no Taneki.
A man based in Chikuzen, formerly Deputy Junior Governor of Dazaifu.
He fought alongside Takaie during the Toi Invasion, and pursued the enemy afterward.
For his service, he was later appointed Governor of Iki.
The Senior Secretary of Dazaifu, Fujiwara no Masanori, also fought hard.
Masanori, for his service, was made Governor of Tsushima, and is also noted as a figure whose descendants would later become the ancestors of the Higo Kikuchi clan.
The careers of these two men show why the Toi Invasion matters so much in the history of the warrior class.
Fight. Achieve results. Win the court’s recognition. Gain office.
Use that office as a foothold to rise in standing in the provinces.
The situation changed in Chikuzen
At Tsushima and Iki, the Toi had inflicted overwhelming damage.
But once they reached Chikuzen, things changed.
Because Dazaifu had already organized its defenses.
Troops entered the coastal defense posts. Local armed forces gathered.
The Toi tried to burn the defense posts, and even attempted an attack on Hakozaki Shrine.
But here, they were driven back.
The Toi, who had struck Tsushima and Iki almost unopposed, ran into organized resistance for the first time.
“Could this be the Goryeo army?” — at first, no one even knew who the enemy was
Today, information about an enemy force’s identity would arrive almost immediately.
1019 was different.
A great fleet had suddenly appeared from across the sea.
The Japanese side initially suspected “could this be a Goryeo force?”
Japan and Goryeo had no formal diplomatic relations at the time, and information was limited.
Fighting even as they did so, the defenders took prisoners and examined the enemy’s language, equipment, and behavior.
Through this process, it gradually became clear that the raiders were not a Goryeo army, but a group called “the Toi.”
Here, Takaie showed real caution.
Even in pursuit, he issued instructions to the effect that his forces must not enter Goryeo territory.
He avoided letting the pursuit of the enemy in front of him escalate into a state conflict with Goryeo.
Takaie, once known as a hot-blooded youth, was, at 40, moving his army with an eye on diplomacy as well.
This change in the man is fascinating in its own right.
The Toi withdraw from Japan
Having met resistance in Chikuzen, the Toi moved on toward Matsura District in Hizen Province.
Here too, local forces resisted.
And the Toi withdrew from the Japanese archipelago.
From the attack on Tsushima to their departure from Japanese waters, roughly one week had passed.
A short span of time.
But the damage left behind in that one week was immense.
Hundreds dead.
More than a thousand abducted.
Homes burned. Food seized.
Tsushima and Iki, in particular, suffered especially severe damage.
The Toi fleet sailed back across the sea, carrying its captives with it.
Normally, the story would end here.
But the Toi Invasion has one more major turn to its story.
This time, Goryeo attacked the Toi
Having left Japan, the Toi headed toward the Korean peninsula.
There, they fought against the Goryeo army.
Goryeo, the very power Japan had first feared might itself be the enemy, now fought the Toi in turn.
And Goryeo rescued the people the Toi had carried off from Japan.
Goryeo protected the rescued Japanese and sent them home.
This movement is recorded in the History of Goryeo as well.
The Toi Invasion was never simply a matter of Japan against the Toi.
Japan. Goryeo. The Jurchen group.
It was an event in the maritime world of eleventh-century East Asia, entangling the movements of three separate powers.
A woman who was carried off came home to Japan
Individual lives survive within this history as well.
A woman named Kura no Iwame, who lived at Itamochi Estate, land held by Anraku-ji Temple in Shima District, Chikuzen Province.
Iwame was one of those carried off by the Toi.
She later returned to Japan by way of Goryeo.
On the thirteenth day of the seventh month, in the third year of Kannin (1019), she gave a report on her journey to and from Goryeo, and on conditions there.
This report survives as a related source cited in the Shoyuki.
“1,289 abducted.”
Reduced to a figure alone, this becomes a statistic.
But every single one of those people had a name, a family, a life.
Iwame’s own record carries that truth down to the present.
A man who fled, leaving his mother behind, crossed the sea a second time
One more striking story survives.
Nagamine no Morochika.
A man who served as an assistant magistrate on Tsushima, captured by the Toi along with his family.
Morochika himself managed to escape.
But he had left his mother behind.
Morochika worried for her.
And so, breaking the ban on overseas travel, he crossed to Goryeo himself.
To search for his mother.
He later returned to Japan with a group of women who had been held captive, and reported on conditions there.
From within the eleventh-century record, the image of a son searching for his mother suddenly rises to the surface.
It is an episode that shows the Toi Invasion was never simply “a war against a foreign power” — it was an event that tore families apart.
After the enemy was driven off, Kyoto argued over whether to grant rewards
The Toi had withdrawn.
And so Takaie made a request to the court.
Grant rewards to the men who fought.
Okura no Taneki and the others had fought at the risk of their lives, and had actually driven the enemy off.
But in Kyoto, an unexpected debate broke out.
What became an issue was that the fighting had ended before the court’s order to subdue the enemy ever arrived.
The men had not fought under a formal order.
So there was no need to grant them rewards — this was the argument.
Some among the senior nobles took exactly this position.
On the ground, the enemy stood right in front of them. In Kyoto, they were debating procedure.
This gap in urgency captures one of the defining scenes of the whole Toi Invasion.
Fujiwara no Sanesuke spoke up — “Precisely because it came before the order, they should be rewarded”
The man who made his presence felt in this debate was Fujiwara no Sanesuke.
A leading senior noble of the age, and the man who kept the diary known as the Shoyuki.
Sanesuke opposed the idea of withholding rewards simply because the enemy had been driven off before the court’s order arrived.
Instead, he took the position that fighting to defend the realm before any order arrived was exactly why the men deserved reward.
Sanesuke was known as a man who never bent easily even to Fujiwara no Michinaga’s power, and was called “the wise Minister of the Right.”
In the matter of the Toi Invasion too, he gave real weight to the achievements of the men who had actually fought on the ground.
As a result, men who had distinguished themselves in battle went on to receive office — Okura no Taneki as Governor of Iki, Fujiwara no Masanori as Governor of Tsushima, and others besides.
By 1019, how far had “the age of the nobility using the warriors” already come?
Here, it’s worth connecting this back to the rivalry between Taira no Korehira and Taira no Muneyori from the previous episode (available in English here).
In 998, Taira no Korehira and Taira no Muneyori clashed by force in Ise.
Both men held retainers and their own military strength.
And yet, once they engaged in a private feud, they found themselves summoned before the court and judged.
The nobility drove politics. The warriors bore arms beneath them.
Twenty-one years later, in 1019.
The Toi came from across the sea.
No army rushed down from Kyoto.
Fujiwara no Takaie, as Dazai Gon no Sochi, took command, and it was the officials of Dazaifu and the armed local families rooted in Kyushu who did the actual fighting.
The Sekai Dai Hyakka Jiten likewise sees the core strength of the Dazaifu army as the forces of local, warrior-like families.
The warriors of this period were still not the true protagonists driving politics.
But the moment real fighting was needed, they became indispensable.
And distinguishing themselves in battle brought them office.
Building standing in the provinces.
Extending a family’s power.
The more the nobility needed military force, the more valuable those who held it became.
Bit by bit, this is how the warriors accumulated their strength.
And nine years later — the court comes to depend on a single warrior
Nine years after the Toi Invasion, in the first year of Chogen (1028).
This time, the enemy did not come from across the sea.
In the east, a powerful warrior rose in open defiance of the court.
Taira no Tadatsune.
A man who held enormous power centered on Kazusa, Shimosa, and Awa Provinces.
The court dispatched a commander to subdue him.
Yet the rebellion did not end.
The fighting dragged on for more than three years.
Then, in the fourth year of Chogen (1031).
A man appeared who finally brought Tadatsune to surrender.
Minamoto no Yorinobu.
A son of Minamoto no Mitsunaka.
In the Toi Invasion of 1019, a nobleman, Fujiwara no Takaie, commanded the armed local forces on the ground.
In the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune, beginning in 1028, the court came to need the personal ties and reputation of a single warrior himself.
From an age in which the nobility used the warriors, to an age that could not be resolved without the warriors themselves.
That shift was about to show itself with full clarity in the east.
(The rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune is available in English here, and a profile of Taira no Tadatsune himself here.)
