FORCES OF NATURE · AUG 1281 · HAKATA BAY, KYUSHU
The kamikaze never blows
In August 1281 the largest invasion fleet the world had yet built lay off the Japanese coast, held at the beach by a stone wall, until a typhoon destroyed it and was named the divine wind. This is the timeline where the storm passes north.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
14 AUG 1281 · THE BAY
Four thousand four hundred ships stand off Kyushu, the greatest fleet any ocean has carried; it will remain so until the twentieth century. This is Kublai Khan’s second attempt at Japan, crewed from conquered Korea and conquered China. Ashore, the samurai wait behind the reason the fleet is still afloat and not ashore: twenty kilometres of stone wall, two metres high, built along Hakata Bay for exactly this morning. For weeks the invasion has bled against the wall and the night raids of small boats. It is storm season, and every man on both sides watches the sky. In our timeline the sky answered.
In the timeline recorded here, the great typhoon of mid-August rides a cooler current and breaks on empty ocean two hundred miles north.
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