The naval history of Japan began with early interactions with states on the Asian continent in the 3rd century BCE during the Yayoi period. It reached a pre-modern peak of activity during the 16th century, a time of cultural exchange with European powers and extensive trade with the Asian continent. After over two centuries of self-imposed seclusion under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan's naval technologies became outdated compared to Western navies. The country was forced to abandon its maritime restrictions by American intervention with the Perry Expedition in 1854. This and other events led to the Meiji Restoration, a period of frantic modernization and industrialization accompanied by the re-ascendance of the Emperor's rule and colonialism with the Empire of Japan. Japan became the first industrialized Asian country in 1868, by 1920 the Imperial Japanese Navy was the third largest navy in the world and arguably the most modern at the brink of World War II.
The Imperial Japanese Navy had a history of successes, sometimes against much more powerful foes as in the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War, the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, and early naval battles during World War II. In 1945, towards the end of the conflict, the navy was almost completely destroyed by the United States Navy. Japan's current navy is a branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) called the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). In 2015, the JMSDF was ranked by Credit Suisse as the fourth most powerful military in the world. However, it is still denied any offensive role by the nation's post-war Constitution and public opinion.
Prehistory Japan was connected to the Asian continent via land during the glacial maximum of the last ice age around 20,000 BCE. This allowed for the transmission of flora and fauna, including the establishment of the Jōmon culture. The land bridges disappeared in the Jōmon period around 10,000 BCE. After that period however, Japan became an isolated island territory, depending entirely on sporadic naval activity for its interactions with the continent. The shortest seapath to the continent (besides the inhospitable northern path from Hokkaidō to Sakhalin) then involved two stretches of open water about 50 kilometers wide, between the Korean peninsula and the island of Tsushima, and then from Tsushima to the major island of Kyūshū.
Early historical period Ambassadorial visits to Japan by the later Northern Chinese dynasties Wei and Jin (Encounters of the Eastern Barbarians, Wei Chronicles) recorded that some Japanese people claimed to be descendants of Taibo of Wu, refugees after the fall of the Wu state in the 5th century BCE. History books do have records of Wu Taibo sending 4000 males and 4000 females to Japan.
Yayoi Period The first major naval contacts occurred in the Yayoi period in the 3rd century BCE, when rice-farming and metallurgy were introduced, from the continent.
The 14 AD incursion of Silla (新羅, Shiragi in Japanese), one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, is the earliest Japanese military action recorded in Samguk Sagi. According to that record, Wa (the proto-Japanese nation) sent one hundred ships and led an incursion on the coastal area of Silla before being driven off.
Yamato Period
During the Yamato period, Japan had intense naval interaction with the Asian continent, largely centered around diplomacy and trade with China, the Korean kingdoms, and other continental states, since at latest the beginning of the Kofun period in the 3rd century. According to a mythological account in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, Empress Jingū is claimed to have invaded Korea in the 3rd century, and to have returned victorious after three years. Whether a Japanese political entity actually ruled a part of Korea in ancient times is debated, but considered unlikely for that time period.
Other than the expedition of Empress Jingū, battle of Hakusukinoe (白村江), one of the earliest historical events in Japan's naval history took place in 663. Japan sent 32,000 troops and possibly as many as 1,000 ships to Korea to support the declining Baekje kingdom (百済国 (contemporary records suggest that Baekje and Yamato Japan were allies, and that their royal/imperial families were possibly related) against Silla and Tang-dynasty China. They were defeated by the T'ang-Silla combined force.
The Azumi people were a warrior tribe from northern Kyushu. They were extremely skilled seafarers. The Azumi gained early contact with the Yamato Court and provided maritime trade links and influenced the Yamato Court's military and diplomatic approach in the seas. Thus the Japanese imperial government employed them as their naval force from the 3rd to 5th centuries.
Medieval period
Naval battles of a very large scale, fought between Japanese clans and involving more than 1000 warships, are recorded from the 12th century. The decisive battle of the Genpei War, and one of the most famous and important naval battles in pre-modern Japanese history, was the 1185 battle of Dan-no-ura, which was fought between the fleets of the Minamoto and Taira clans. These battles consisted first of long-range archery exchanges, then giving way to hand-to-hand combat with swords and daggers. Ships were used largely as floating platforms for what were largely land-based melee tactics.
Mongol invasions (1274–1281)
. The first major references to Japanese naval actions against other Asian powers occur in the accounts of the Mongol invasions of Japan by Kublai Khan in 1281. Japan had no navy which could seriously challenge the Mongol navy, so most of the action took place on Japanese land. Groups of samurai, transported on small coastal boats, are recorded to have boarded, taken over and burned several ships of the Mongol navy.
Wakō piracy (13th–16th century)
During the following centuries, wakō pirates actively plundered the coast of the Chinese Empire. Though the term wakō translates directly to "Japanese pirates", Japanese were far from the only sailors to harass shipping and ports in China and other parts of Asia in this period, and the term thus more accurately includes non-Japanese pirates as well. The first raid by wakō on record occurred in the summer of 1223, on the south coast of Goryeo. At the peak of wakō activity around the end of the 14th century, fleets of 300 to 500 ships, transporting several hundred horsemen and several thousand soldiers, would raid the coast of China. For the next half-century, sailing principally from Iki Island and Tsushima, they engulfed coastal regions of the southern half of Goryeo. Between 1376 and 1385, no fewer than 174 instances of pirate raids were recorded in Korea. However, when Joseon dynasty was founded in Korea, wakō took a massive hit in one of their main homeland of Tsushima during the Ōei Invasion. The peak of wakō activity was during the 1550s, when tens of thousands of pirates raided the Chinese coast in what is called the Jiajing wakō raids, but the wakō at this time were mostly Chinese. Wakō piracy ended for the most part in the 1580s with its interdiction by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Official trading missions, such as the Tenryūji-bune, were also sent to China around 1341.
Sengoku period (15th–16th century)
Various daimyō clans undertook major naval building efforts in the 16th century, during the Sengoku period, when feudal rulers vying for supremacy built vast coastal navies of several hundred ships. The largest of these ships were called atakebune. Around that time, Japan seems to have developed one of the first ironclad warships in history, when Oda Nobunaga, a Japanese daimyō, had six iron-covered Ō-atakebune ("Great Atakebune") made in 1576. These ships were called , literally "iron armored ships", and were armed with multiple cannons and large caliber rifles to defeat the large, but all wooden, vessels of the enemy. With these ships, Nobunaga defeated the Mōri clan navy at the mouth of the Kizu River, near Osaka in 1578, and began a successful naval blockade. The Ō-atakebune are regarded as floating fortresses rather than true warships, however, and were only used in coastal actions.
European contacts
The first Europeans reached Japan in 1543 on Chinese junks, and Portuguese ships started to arrive in Japan soon after. At that time, there was already trade exchanges between Portugal and Goa (since around 1515), consisting in 3 to 4 carracks leaving Lisbon with silver to purchase cotton and spices in India. Out of these, only one carrack went on to China in order to purchase silk, also in exchange for Portuguese silver. Accordingly, the cargo of the first Portuguese ships (usually about 4 smaller-sized ships every year) arriving in Japan almost entirely consisted of Chinese goods (silk, porcelain). The Japanese were very much looking forward to acquiring such goods, but had been prohibited from any contacts with by the emperor of China, as a punishment for wakō pirate raids. The Portuguese (who were called Nanban, lit. Southern Barbarians) therefore found the opportunity to act as intermediaries in Asian trade.
From the time of the acquisition of Macau in 1557, and their formal recognition as trade partners by the Chinese, the Portuguese started to regulate trade to Japan, by selling to the highest bidder the annual "captaincy" (ito wappu) to Japan, in effect conferring exclusive trading rights for a single carrack bound for Japan every year. The carracks were very large ships, usually between 1000 and 1500 tons, about double or triple the size of a large galleon or junk.
That trade continued with few interruptions until 1638, when it was prohibited on the grounds that the priests and missionaries associated with the Portuguese traders were perceived as posing a threat to the shogunate's power and the nation's stability.
Portuguese trade was progressively more and more challenged by Chinese smugglers, Japanese Red Seal Ships from around 1592 (about ten ships every year), Spanish ships from Manila from around 1600 (about one ship a year), the Dutch from 1609, and the English from 1613 (about one ship per year). Some Japanese are known to have travelled abroad on foreign ships as well, such as Christopher and Cosmas who crossed the Pacific on a Spanish galleon as early as 1587, and then sailed to Europe with Thomas Cavendish.
The Dutch, who, rather than Nanban were called , lit. "Red Hair" by the Japanese, first arrived in Japan in 1600, on board the Liefde. Their pilot was William Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan. In 1605, two of the Liefde'''s crew were sent to Pattani by Tokugawa Ieyasu, to invite Dutch trade to Japan. The head of the Pattani Dutch trading post, Victor Sprinckel, refused on the grounds that he was too busy dealing with Portuguese opposition in Southeast Asia. In 1609, however, the Dutchman Jacques Specx arrived with two ships in Hirado, and through Adams obtained trading privileges from Ieyasu.
The Dutch also engaged in piracy and naval combat to weaken Portuguese and Spanish shipping in the Pacific, and ultimately became the only Westerners to be allowed access to Japan. For two centuries beginning in 1638, they were restricted to the island of Dejima in Nagasaki harbor.
Invasions of Korea and the Ryūkyūs