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The story
Parts of arrows have been discovered at the Takashima underwater site in Matsuura, Nagasaki Prefecture, from a ship that sank during the Mongol invasions of Japan. The arrows, coated in black lacquer with red lacquer decoration, appear to be of Southern Song origin — suggesting the Mongols repurposed arrows seized after conquering the Southern Song for their assault on Japan.
The thread lit up with debate over how the find could even be confirmed as an arrow at all, alongside historical discussion of the power of Japanese longbows and Mongol military tactics — mixed in with some politically charged exchanges touching on China and Korea.
8/21/2026, 10:15 AM
It was revealed on the 20th that parts of arrows have been found at the Takashima underwater site in Matsuura, Nagasaki Prefecture, from a ship that sank during the Mongol invasions of Japan in the Kamakura period, launched by the Yuan dynasty, which then held Mongol territory.
The arrows are believed to be from China’s Southern Song dynasty, seized by the Yuan after they conquered it and repurposed for the war against Japan.
Source: sankei.com / Original article here
What people said
How can they even confirm this is an arrow?
Are they stupid?
They're calling it an arrow because it's an arrow — if you ask how they can be so sure, there's really no way to answer that.
"Seized from the Southern Song and repurposed for the war against Japan?"
More like they worked the former Southern Song people to the bone and used them for the invasion of Japan.
So it's actually pretty natural for Southern Song military gear to turn up among artifacts related to the Mongol invasions.
"The Mongol invasions, launched by the Yuan dynasty, which then held Mongol territory" —
That phrasing alone is already hinting "this has nothing to do with China."
Do readers in Japan even need a footnote explaining what the Yuan dynasty and the Mongol invasions were in the first place?
Who exactly is this article written for?
They became the Mongols' underlings, sure, but then went on to revive a Chinese empire, didn't they.
Back then, Japan had the wayumi — a longbow uniquely developed in Japan — that could shoot far farther than the Mongol army's bows and could even punch straight through steel-plate armor. Just look at the yabusame horseback-archery ritual and you can see how huge the wayumi really is. What's more, it was fired by professional warriors on horseback who'd trained and trained. Japan was already the strongest in the world at that point.
The Mongol troops would get wiped out almost the instant they landed.
Wooden anchors from Mongol invasion ships were recovered in 1994 and 2022.
They're massive — search for images, it's pretty wild.
The horseback-archery of the Kamakura samurai was actually closer to genuine Mongol-style tactics.
Well, that's because the defeated troops just fought however they were ordered to, right?
Were there even any actual Mongols on the ground, or was it just a handful of them there as overseers reporting back like some ruling elite up top?
Background and Key Points
The Takashima underwater site off Matsuura has been excavated since the 1980s as the resting place of part of the 1281 Kōan invasion fleet, the second of two Mongol assaults on Japan during the Kamakura period (the first, in 1274, is known as the Bun’ei War). Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty finished conquering the Southern Song only in 1279 — just two years before the second invasion — so the 1281 armada was split between an Eastern Route Army of Mongols and Koreans and a much larger Jiangnan Army built around former Southern Song ships, sailors, and equipment. That composition is why Song-style black-and-red lacquered arrows turning up at Takashima fits known troop makeup rather than being a genuine surprise; past dives at the same site have already recovered ship timbers, ceramics, exploding tetsuhau bombs, and the large wooden anchors raised in 1994 and 2022 that a couple of posters bring up.
Where the thread actually diverged was less about that historical picture than about epistemics and national pride: one strand doubted whether fragmentary lacquered wood could be confidently identified as an arrow at all, while a larger strand talked past each other over whether Kamakura-era Japanese archery (the wayumi, invoked via the yabusame ritual) was simply superior to Mongol and Song weaponry, alongside a side argument about how much credit belongs to conscripted former-Song troops versus “real” Mongols doing the fighting.
What the thread never really lands on is that the invasions’ failure owed far more to two typhoons — the “kamikaze” of 1274 and 1281 — hastily built coastal stone walls along Hakata Bay, and the fleet’s own poor seaworthiness than to any bow being decisively superior on the battlefield. The yabusame comparisons posters lean on are ceremonial demonstrations of horseback archery, not evidence of what actually happened in the fighting itself.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread “Mongol Invasion Arrows Found in Sunken Ship — Seized from the Southern Song and Repurposed for the War Against Japan, at the Underwater Site in Matsuura, Nagasaki.”
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