is a Japanese

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

ship and former training vessel. She is permanently docked in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

harbor, in Nippon Maru Memorial Park.Yokohama Visitors Guide
''Nippon Maru''
; retrieved 2012-6-28. She was built by

Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation is the shipbuilding subsidiary of Kawasaki Heavy Industries. It produces primarily specialized commercial vessels, including LNG carriers, LPG carriers, container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers, as well as high speed passenger jetfoils. In ...

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whi ...

, and was launched on 27 January 1930 alongside her sister ship '' Kaiwo Maru''. She was operated by the Tokyo Institute for Maritime Training to train officers for Japan's merchant marine. At the beginning of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, her sailing rig was removed and she served as a training and postwar transport motorship. In 1952, her rig was reinstalled and she resumed her training voyages until she was replaced in September 1984 by her successor, also named ''Nippon Maru''. ''Nippon Maru'' measures long, with a beam of and a draft of . Her

gross tonnage Gross tonnage (GT, G.T. or gt) is a nonlinear measure of a ship's overall internal volume. Gross tonnage is different from gross register tonnage. Neither gross tonnage nor gross register tonnage should be confused with measures of mass or weig ...

is 2,286. She is rigged as a four-masted barque, with 32 sails covering , and two 600-horsepower diesel engines for auxiliary functions. During her career as a training ship, she was manned by a crew of 27 officers, 48 seamen, and 120 trainees. Four-masted ships

Gallery

Nippon_maru.JPG, Nippon Maru in 2008 Nihonmaru_1.jpg, Nippon Maru in 2004 Yokohama_Nipponmaru_6.jpg, Nippon Maru in 2009

References

External links

Nippon Maru guidebook (in English)
Museums in Yokohama 1930 ships Museum ships in Japan Ships built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries Training ships of Japan Tall ships of Japan {{Japan-museum-stub