The is a coastal defense located in

Hyōgo-ku, Kobe is one of nine wards of Japan, wards of Kobe, Japan. It has an area of 14.56 km2 and a population of 106,322 (as of January 1, 2015). The area's location with a natural harbour near the Akashi Strait which links Osaka Bay and the Seto inl ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It was built in 1864 by the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

in the

Bakumatsu was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government ...

period, shortly before the end of the Shōgun's reign. One of many batteries built by the shogunate towards the end of its reign, the Wadamisaki Battery is the only one remaining from several that were built around Osaka Bay and is today listed in the Japanese government's register of historic sites.

History

After coming to power in the early 17th century, the Tokugawa shogunate had kept Japan in a state of isolation (''

sakoku was the Isolationism, isolationist Foreign policy of Japan, foreign policy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate under which, for a period of 265 years during the Edo period (from 1603 to 1868), relations and trade between Japan and other countri ...

'') for a period of more than 250 years. This isolation was brought to an end in the 1850s by the arrival of American and British forces who demanded the opening of Japan's ports to trade. After initial resistance the Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed between the United States in July 1858 and Hyogo Port was opened to American trade on 1 January 1860. Fearing Japan could be colonised by Western forces, the defence of Hyogo Port was upgraded with the construction of the Wadamisaki Battery. It was one of several batteries constructed around Osaka Bay under the orders of Count

Katsu Kaishū Count , best known by his nickname , was a Japanese statesman and naval engineer during the late Tokugawa shogunate and early Meiji period. Kaishū was a nickname which he took from a piece of calligraphy (Kaishū Shooku ) by Sakuma Shōzan. He ...

, who was also responsible for establishing the

Kobe Naval Training Center The was a naval training institute in Bakumatsu period Japan, established by the Military Commissioner of the Tokugawa shogunate, Katsu Kaishū in May 1864. Institutional History Following the closure of the Nagasaki Naval Training Center by hi ...

near the Wadamisaki Battery. The battery was designed by and the contractor was . It was completed in 1864 after approximately 15 to 18 months of construction and at a cost of approximately 25,000 ''

ryō The was a gold currency unit in the shakkanhō system in pre- Meiji Japan. It was eventually replaced with a system based on the ''yen''. Origins The ''ryō'' was originally a unit of weight from China, the ''tael.'' It came into use in Japan ...

''. With the full opening of Hyogo Port (modern day Kobe Port) on 1 January 1868, the batteries that lined the coast of Osaka Bay were no longer required despite never being put to use. Of the other batteries built in Hyogo Prefecture during the 1860s, only the outer granite wall of the Nishinomiya Battery remains after its wooden internal structure was destroyed by fire in 1884. All of the other batteries were sold off to private individuals and demolished during the

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

. In 1872 the Hyogo prefecture government decided to sell the Wadamisaki Battery site also, however the governor of the prefecture overruled the decision and it remained public property. The site was eventually sold to Hyōgo Sōko in 1896, who in turn sold it the following year to the , which at the time was the parent company of the Mitsubishi group of companies. On 3 March 1921 the battery was registered as a

historic site A historic site or heritage site is an official location where pieces of political, military, cultural, or social history have been preserved due to their cultural heritage value. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been rec ...

by the national government, the first in Hyogo Prefecture. It underwent its first major repairs from October 1926 to January 1927, during which steel supports were added to support the roof. The battery survived the 1995

Great Hanshin earthquake The , or Kobe earthquake, occurred on January 17, 1995, at 05:46:53 JST (January 16 at 20:46:53 UTC) in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region known as Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and had ...

, although it left cracks in the granite walls and the entire structure tilted seven centimetres. It underwent renovation in 2009 to dismantle and repair the wooden interior and make repairs to the wooden exterior; this work was completed in 2014.

Construction

The outer

enceinte Enceinte (from Latin incinctus: girdled, surrounded) is a French term that refers to the "main defensive enclosure of a fortification". For a castle, this is the main defensive line of wall towers and curtain walls enclosing the position. For ...

was built of

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

from the

Shiwaku Islands The or are an archipelago in the Seto Inland Sea, between the larger Japanese islands of Honshu and Shikoku. The group is situated between Okayama Prefecture and Kagawa Prefecture in the western Bisan Seto and consists of 28 islands of various ...

and the inner two-storey structure was made of keyaki (Japanese elm) wood harvested from the Nunobiki and Tekkai mountains in Kobe.

Current status

The battery now lies within the compound of

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is a Japanese multinational engineering, electrical equipment and electronics corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. MHI is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group and its automobile division is the predecessor of Mitsubishi Mo ...

' Kobe shipyards. The first floor is open to viewing (with prior booking) once a month and for small group tours upon prior arrangement.

References

External links

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries site
with details for booking a tour

{{coord, 34.6524, N, 135.1849, E, source:wikidata, display=title Buildings and structures in Kobe Registered Monuments of Japan 1864 establishments in Japan Forts in Japan Artillery batteries 19th-century fortifications in Japan