Takezaki Suenaga

Who They Were

Takezaki Suenaga (竹崎季長) was a samurai of the Kamakura period, the warrior government that ruled Japan from 1185 to 1333. He was born in 1246 in Higo Province, on the island of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's main islands and the region closest to the Asian mainland. As a bushi (武士, warrior), he served a military lord and owed him armed service in exchange for land or reward.

Suenaga is remembered for one thing above all: he fought in the Mongol invasions of Japan, and he left behind a visual record of what he saw and did. That record, the Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba (蒙古襲来絵詞, "Illustrated Account of the Mongol Invasion"), is one of the most important pictorial documents of medieval Japan.

Life and Career

Suenaga was born in 1246, in the fourth year of the Kangen era (寛元), into a warrior family of Higo Province. His family name appears in the records in two forms, Takesaki and Takezaki, and he is known today by the latter.

His military career was defined by two campaigns against the Mongols. The first, the Battle of Bun'ei, took place in 1274, when the forces of Kublai Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire and founder of the Yuan dynasty in China, attacked northern Kyushu. The second, the Battle of Kōan, came in 1281, when the Mongols returned with a far larger invasion force. Suenaga fought in both. On both occasions the invaders were driven off, the second time with enormous losses to the Mongol fleet.

For a warrior of this era, fighting was only half the job. Rewards — land, office, income — were granted by the Kamakura shogunate on the basis of documented service, and a samurai who could not prove what he had done in battle could be passed over. Suenaga's response was extraordinary. He commissioned the Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba, an illustrated handscroll that depicts his own actions in the campaigns: him charging the enemy, his horse shot from under him, his petitions to the shogunate for recognition. The scroll also gives praise to his commanders and to the gods for his survival and success.

He lived a long life by the standards of his age, dying on 4 March 1324.

Why They Matter

The Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba is the reason Suenaga is studied today. It is a rare thing: a first-person, illustrated account of medieval warfare made by a participant, for the purpose of advancing his own claim to reward. Most sources for the Mongol invasions are court chronicles or later compilations. Suenaga's scroll shows the fighting from a mounted warrior's point of view, and it shows the machinery of the Kamakura warrior state — the petitions, the witnesses, the appeals to authority — that turned battlefield deeds into land and status.

The scroll is also a key visual source for how the Mongols and their Korean and Chinese troops were depicted by the Japanese, and for the equipment, armour, and tactics of late thirteenth-century Japanese warfare. It survives in later copies, and it is a designated National Treasure of Japan.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 竹崎季長.

Kana reading: たけざき すえなが

Romaji: Takezaki Suenaga

The family name comes first, as is standard in Japanese. Breaking it down character by character:

竹 — read take here. Meaning: bamboo. It is a common element in Japanese surnames and place names.

崎 — read zaki here. Meaning: cape, promontory, small peninsula. Note that the character is read saki in isolation; it becomes zaki in compounds, a voicing change known as rendaku (連濁), in which the first consonant of a non-initial element becomes voiced. Together, 竹崎 (Takezaki) is a place-derived surname, literally "bamboo cape."

季 — read sue here. Meaning: season; also used in names to suggest youth, or a younger sibling. This is the first element of the given name.

長 — read naga here. Meaning: long, senior, chief. In names it frequently carries the sense of "eldest" or "leader." The same character is read chō in many other contexts, which is why the name is sometimes encountered in romanised forms that reflect a different reading convention.

The given name 季長 (Suenaga) is a two-character male name of the kind common among Kamakura-period warriors, combining a term of seniority with a term of length or precedence. The full name, 竹崎季長, follows the standard Japanese order: surname first, given name second.

Legacy

Suenaga's legacy rests on the scroll he commissioned. Because he wanted his service recorded, later generations inherited a detailed, illustrated window into the Mongol invasions and into the reward system that drove samurai to fight. The Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba is held to be a National Treasure of Japan and is regularly reproduced in histories of the period.

His name also survives in the places associated with him in Kyushu, where he is remembered as a local warrior who fought on the front line of the only major foreign invasions of the Japanese archipelago before the twentieth century. He died on 4 March 1324, having outlived the two campaigns that made his name by more than four decades.