Imperial Japanese Navy: Encyclopedia II - Imperial Japanese Navy - Creation of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869

Imperial Japanese Navy - Creation of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869

From 1868, the restored Meiji Emperor continued with reforms to industrialize and militarize Japan to prevent the United States and European powers from overwhelming her. The Imperial Japanese Navy was formally established in 1869. The new government drafted an ambitious plan to create a Navy with 200 ships organized into 10 fleets. It was abandoned within a year due to lack of resources. Domestic rebellions, especially the Satsuma Rebellion (1877) forced the government to focus on land warfare. Naval policy, expressed by the slogan Shusei Kokubō (Jp:守勢国防, lit. "Static Defense"), focused on coastal defenses, a standing army, and a coastal Navy, leading to a military organization under the Rikushu Kaijū (Jp:陸主海従, Army first, Navy second) principle.

Imperial Japanese Navy - British support

During the 1870s and 1880s, the Japanese Navy remained an essentially coastal defense force, although the Meiji government continued to modernize it. The Jho Sho Maru (soon renamed Ryujo Maru) commissioned by Thomas Glover was launched at Aberdeen on March 27, 1869. In 1870, an Imperial decree determined that Britain's Royal Navy should be the model for development. Ships such as the Fuso, Kongo and the Hiei were built in British shipyards specifically for the Japanese Navy. A British naval mission visited Japan in 1873, headed by Comdr. Archibald Douglas. Later, Comdr. L.P. Willan was hired in 1879 to train naval cadets. Private construction companies such as Ishikawajima and Kawasaki also emerged around this time.

Two large warships were ordered from British shipyards. Naniwa and the Takachiho were 3,650 ton ships. They were capable of speeds up to 18 knots (33 km/h) and were armed with 2 to 3-inch deck armor and two 10.2-in (260 mm) Krupp guns. The naval architect Sasō Sachū designed these on the line of the Elswick class of protected cruisers but with superior specifications. An arms race was taking place with China however, who equipped herself with two huge German battleships of 7,335 tons (Ting Yüan and Chen-Yüan). Unable to confront the Chinese fleet with only two modern cruisers, Japan resorted to French assistance to build a large, modern fleet which could prevail in the upcoming conflict.

Imperial Japanese Navy - Influence of the French Jeune Ecole 1880s

During the 1880s, France took the lead in influence, due to its "Jeune Ecole" ("Young school") doctrine favoring small, fast warships, especially cruisers and torpedo boats, against bigger units. The Meiji government issued its First Naval Expansion bill in 1882, requiring the construction of 48 warships, of which 22 were to be torpedo boats. The naval successes of the French Navy against China in the Sino-French War of 1883–85 seemed to validate the potential of torpedo boats, an approach which was also attractive to the limited resources of Japan. In 1885, the new Navy slogan became Kaikoku Nippon (Jp:海国日本, lit. "Maritime Japan").

In 1886, the leading French Navy engineer Emile Bertin was hired for four years to reinforce the Japanese Navy and to direct the construction of the arsenals of Kure and Sasebo. He developed the Sanseikan class of cruisers; 3 units featuring a single powerful main gun, the 12.6 in (320 mm) Canet gun. Altogether, Bertin supervised the building of more than twenty units. They helped establish the first true modern naval force of Japan. It allowed Japan to achieve mastery in the building of large units, since some of the ships were imported, and some others were built domestically at the arsenal of Yokosuka:

• 3 cruisers: the 4,700 tons Matsushima and Itsukushima, built in France, and the Hashidate, built at Yokosuka.
• 3 coastal warships of 4,278 tons.
• 2 small cruisers: the Chiyoda, a small cruiser of 2,439 tons built in Britain, and the Yaeyama, 1800 tons, built at Yokosuka.
• 1 frigate, the 1600 tons Takao, built at Yokosuka.
• 1 destroyer: the 726 tons Chishima, built in France.
• 16 torpedo boats of 54 tons each, built in France by the Companie du Creusot in 1888, and assembled in Japan.

This period also allowed Japan "to embrace the revolutionary new technologies embodied in torpedoes, torpedo-boats and mines, of which the French at the time were probably the world's best exponents" (Howe, p281). Japan acquired its first torpedoes in 1884, and established a "Torpedo Training Center" at Yokosuka in 1886.

These ships were the last major orders placed with France. Japan turned again to Britain, with the order of a revolutionary torpedo boat, the 1887 Kotaka, which is considered the first ever effective design of a destroyer (Evans Kaigun, p17), and with the purchase of the Yoshino, built at the Armstrong works in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, the fastest cruiser in the world at the time of her launch in 1892.^[3]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Creation of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki