Compassion and Conquest: Memorializing the Transnational Mongol War Dead in Modern Japan

In 1938, Prince Demchugdongrub, a descendant of Chinggis Khan and leader of a Japanese-backed Pan-Mongolist movement, stood on Shika Island in Kyushu to honor Mongol soldiers slain there during the thirteenth-century invasions of Japan. The site, once feared as a “Mongol mound” marking the execution of captured invaders, had been transformed by the Nichiren priest Takanabe Nittō into the Great Memorial Stūpa for the Mongol Army, dedicated to the war dead of both sides under the ideal of onshin byōdō (equality of friend and foe). This paper examines how medieval memory was reframed in 1920s-30s Japan to align with impartial Buddhist compassion with imperial Pan-Asianism. Through textual analysis and attention to Mongol and Chinese responses, the paper argues that the monument functioned as a hinge between pacification and expansion and reveals how Buddhist ritual became a contested medium of transnational diplomacy on the eve of total war.