ceived so small an income that he had difficulty in maintaining his status as a mounted warrior, able to answer the call of his lord fully equipped with horse, armor, and weapons.
Despite these weakening factors, the Kamakura system lasted a century and a half. During this time it withstood the most dangerous threat of aggression from abroad that Japan was to experience prior to recent years. This threat was the attempted Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281.
The Mongols, a nomadic people of the steppe lands north of China, in the first half of the thirteenth century conquered all of Central Asia, southern Russia, and much of the Near East, and their armies penetrated to Silesia and through Hungary to the Adriatic Sea. At the eastern end of this vast empire, they completed the subjugation of Korea in 1259 and crushed the last organized resistance in China itself in 1276.
In the east only Japan remained free of their rule, and the Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, probably looking for more worlds to conquer, sent emissaries to Japan, demanding the capitulation of the island kingdom. The terrified courtiers of Kyoto were ready to accede, but the staunch warriors of Kamakura refused, making their stand unmistakably clear by beheading some of the emissaries.
Such a direct affront could not go unpunished, and in 1274 a strong Mongol force set out on Korean ships to subdue Japan. Certain small islands were seized and a landing was made at Hakata Bay in northern Kyushu, but before any decisive engagement had been fought, the Mongols decided to withdraw to the continent be-