Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/130

 rich prizes fell to the share of the leaders in these internecine struggles, the ordinary samurai gained little by them. His pay was scanty, his prospect of promotion limited, and it may well be that he sometimes turned with loathing from the constant necessity of bathing his hands in the blood of his own countrymen. At all events, piracy became a favourite occupation. The Japanese appear to have regarded the littoral provinces of their neighbours as fair fields for raid and foray. Some historians suggest that the fiercely aggressive temper of the time was kindled, or, at any rate, fanned into active flame, by the Mongol assaults which the great Khan made upon Japan. But the course of events is not consistent with that theory. The defeat of Kublai's armadas, on the contrary, was succeeded by an interval of comparative quiescence, partly, no doubt, because the Japanese appreciated the might of which such formidable efforts were an evidence, and partly because their sea-going capacities still remained comparatively undeveloped. But from the middle of the fourteenth century it became a species of military pastime in Japan to fit out a little fleet of war-boats and make a descent upon the coasts of Korea or of China. The annals of the sufferers, naturally more credible in some respects than those of the aggressors, show that what the Norsemen were to Europe in early ages, and the English to Spanish America in times contemporary with those now under consideration, the