Shipbuilding

This theme covers the state arsenals and private yards that built ships for the Japanese Navy and merchant fleet. Japan's shipbuilding capacity was central to its naval strategy. Major yards at Kure, Yokosuka, Nagasaki (Mitsubishi), and Sasebo produced battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. The four naval arsenals — Yokosuka, Kure, Sasebo and Maizuru — were the core of construction and repair, Kure also making heavy guns and armour plate; private yards such as Mitsubishi's at Nagasaki and Kobe and Kawasaki's at Kobe built many warships and exchanged technology and personnel with the arsenals.

Modern shipbuilding in Japan began with the Yokosuka and Nagasaki iron works of the bakumatsu era and by late Meiji could produce capital ships. Between the wars the naval treaties limited numbers but pushed designers towards individual ship quality and new methods such as electric welding and block construction. In the treaty-free era from 1937 the Kure arsenal and Mitsubishi Nagasaki built the battleships Yamato and Musashi in great secrecy. After 1941 priority shifted to carriers, destroyers, submarines and escorts, and the industry mobilized civilian shipyards for military production throughout the war, mass-producing simplified wartime standard ships to replace merchant losses. Even so, losses to U.S. submarines, aircraft and mines far outran new construction: Japan lost more than eight million gross tons of merchant shipping, and the collapse of sea transport was a direct cause of the breakdown of the war economy.

Shipbuilding shows both the technical capability and the resource limits of wartime Japan. Docks, steel and skilled labour were among the most fiercely contested resources between the Army, the Navy and civilian needs, and late in the war the yards depended heavily on conscripted workers, mobilised students, Korean labourers and Allied prisoners of war. After the war the former naval arsenals became private yards, wartime block-construction and welding techniques were carried over, and by the mid-1950s Japan launched more tonnage than any other country.

Under this theme visitors will find Meiji-era stone dry docks still in use, giant cranes, the great roof over the dock where Yamato was built, shipyard offices and guest houses, and museums of naval technology. The giant cantilever crane, former pattern shop and No. 3 dock of the Nagasaki shipyard were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2015 as part of the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution. Many facilities are inside working yards or bases and can be seen only from outside or on set days.