Imperial Japanese Navy

• Japanese: 大日本帝国海軍 (dai nippon teikoku kaigun)

The Imperial Japanese Navy, established in the Meiji period, was the first modern/Western style national navy in Japanese history. Organized with the British Royal Navy as its model, the Imperial Japanese Navy possessed 28 modern warships in 1894, with a total displacement of 57,000 tons, a number of them constructed in England, plus 24 torpedo boats. Though initially headed by Katsu Kaishû (oft-regarded as the "father" or "grandfather" of the modern Japanese navy), many of the other top-ranking naval officials in the Meiji period were former samurai of Satsuma domain.

Major military ports such as Kure and Sasebo were made able, from a very early point in the Meiji period, to house, arm, maintain, and repair modern warships.

References

• Conrad Schirokauer, David Lurie, and Suzanne Gay, A Brief History of Japanese Civilization, Wadsworth Cengage (2013), 192.