At the outset of the 20th century, Japan sought to keep pace with contemporary warship design by authorizing a modern battle fleet composed of battleships and battlecruisers under their Eight-Eight Naval Expansion Program of 1907. However, the appearance of HMS Dreadnought and HMS Invincible soon afterward rendered the planned Japanese designs obsolete. The Japanese recast their designs and their 1911 Emergency Naval Expansion program authorized the construction of one battleship (Fuso) and four armored cruisers, which became the Kongo class of battlecruisers. 

As part of the new naval expansion program, the Japanese also entered into an agreement with famed British shipbuilder Vickers, Ltd. Vickers agreed to prepare a design for the new battlecruiser, and their naval architect Sir George Thurston was tasked with the design of the new class. Vickers also agreed to maximize the transfer of naval technology to the Japanese while constructing the lead ship (Kongo) at the Vickers shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness.  There, Vickers trained between 100 and 200 Japanese technical specialists in all aspects of design and fabrication during the construction of Kongo. 

The subsequent sisters of the class (Hiei, Haruna, Kirishima) were laid down and constructed in Japanese shipyards by Japanese shipbuilders with predominantly Japanese manufactured material.
 

Design

The new class was essentially an improved and slightly enlarged RN Lion class battle cruiser. The Kongos sported a new 14inch45cal main battery, consisting of twin mounts in four turrets. Two were forward, two were aft, with numbers two and three turrets superimposed over number one and four turrets. At the time of their completion, these were the largest guns afloat, preceding those of the USN New York class battleships by a few months.

The ships displaced approximately 27,500 tons on a hull whose overall length reached 704feet/214.5m, with a beam of 92ft/28m, and a draft of 27 ft/8.22m. They were driven by Mitsubishi-Parsons steam turbines powering 4 shafts with a total power of 65,000shp. Power was from a mix of 36 coal and oil-fired Yarrow boilers. Top speed was 27.5 knots, with a range of 8,000 miles at 14 knots. 

While perhaps not as heavily armored as contemporary battleships, they still carried significant amounts of armor. Before their first major reconstruction in the late 1920s, they carried an upper armor belt nearly 6 inches thick, and a lower belt of 8 inches that thinned towards the bow and stern. Deck armor ranged from 1.5 to 2.75 inches. The main turrets were not heavily armored relative to contemporary battleships, with a maximum face plate thickness of nine inches. 

The Kongo class design was considered to be a success and some aspects of their design, such as the extent of the lower armor belt and the re-siting of number three turret aft of number three funnel, were said to have been incorporated into HMS Tiger, a powerful new British battlecruiser then under construction. 
 

Ship History

Kirishima was laid down at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard in Nagasaki on March 17, 1912 as the fourth ship of the Kongo class off battlecruisers.  She was built in a private yard due to the shortage of available facilities in existing naval yards. Sister ship Haruna was built concurrently in the private yards of Kawasaki at Kobe.  Kirishima was launched on December 1, 1913 and completed on April 19, 1915. Haruna was completed on the same day. Together, they were assigned to the 1st Battleship Division (BatDiv) of the First Fleet.  After several month of trials, she was transferred to the 3rd BatDiv of Second Fleet. 

She spent much of the next three years of the First World War patrolling off the coast of China and Korea with her sisters on behalf of the Allies, searching for German raiders and remaining elements of the German East Asia Squadron. Postwar, she was much less active, engaging in training and patrols. She did assist in rescue efforts following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

She underwent several modernizations and refits, the most significant occurring in 1927-1930 (First Reconstruction) and 1934-1936 (Second Reconstruction). She gained additional armor, weapon, and engineering changes that transformed her (and her sisters) into fast battleships. 

Kirishima went on to play a significant role in the first year of the Pacific War, participating as the primary heavy escort along with sister Hiei to the Kido Butai in the attack on Pearl Harbor, the conquest of the Dutch East Indies, attacks and operations in the Indian Ocean, Midway, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. the Battle of Santa Cruz, and finally, as a part of a surface bombardment force for the First and Second Naval Battles of Guadalcanal in November, 1942. She was sunk during the latter, after engaging two US battleships and damaging one. She lost 212 crewmen.

A good overview of her history can be read on her Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Kirishima

A very detailed history of Kirishima is available on her Tabulated Record of Movement (TROM) entry on the Combinedfleet.com website.
 

The Kit

Despite the many model kits of the Kongo class sisters available, in numerous wartime fits and in a variety of scales, an as-built kit of any member of this class has been almost non-existent. Desire for these ships in their original battlecruiser form has been a constant for some modelers since Kongo class model kits were first introduced. Unfortunately, kit manufacturers felt there was not enough demand or interest to warrant such a release. The one exception to this circumstance until a few years ago was a now long out-of-production 1/700 resin kit of Kongo 1915 by a Japanese company known as Joe World. Since then, ROP o.s. introduced another 1/700 resin version of Kongo 1914 in 2015, but it is a little pricey.  So, such offerings have been slim, to say the least.

A new company, Kajika, began releasing 1/700 as-built, injection molded renditions of the Kongo class, starting in early 2017.  To be honest, I’m not entirely clear on Kajika’s origins. It’s a very new company and on-line references have alternatively identified it as either a subsidiary or sister company to Flyhawk.  Given the similarity between the Kajika kits and those of Flyhawk in terms of type of styrene used, the high degree and extent of detailing, and the layout of the of the sprues, I can well believe it.  That the Kirishima kit was first released in China, and that this review sample was sent by Flyhawk, only cements that link. 

In any case, these new releases began with Kongo, and then came Hiei, Haruna, and now Kirishima. In addition to the kits, various accessories have been issued including ship specific photo-etch, metal gun barrels, wood deck stickers, deck masks, and name plates, plus more generic rigging line, anchor chain and display bases.  In a word, the overall product support for these kits from Kajika has been robust.

The kit itself is molded in a medium dark grey plastic with a smooth, almost matt finish. There was no flash present on my sample, though there is a set of sinkhole-like depressions to either side of the bow. 
The fit of the kit is as-built and commissioned in 1915. She remained in this configuration until 1923, when she took on the first of several noticeable modifications. 
 

Packaging

I only comment on a kit’s packaging when it is noteworthy in some way. Here, the hull, waterline plate, and two main deck pieces were all wrapped in a sheet of protective foam, with a layer of foam between each component. The kit itself was placed within a substantial than usual cardboard box. This is certainly a step beyond the basic approach to packaging typically taken by kit manufacturers. 

The plastic is a little thinner and more flexible than what I’m used to in a waterline capital ship kit. My sample lies mostly flat, with a hair of a twist to port at the bow and to starboard at the stern. But, that’s with a long internal plastic extrusion runner still attached to the inside of the hull.  This may or may not change things once it removed. By a hair, I mean a rise off the horizontal at the waterline by less than a half millimeter. It stands a good chance of correction with the deck and waterline plates glued in place. 

The detailing is excellent; crisp and scaled appropriately. The hull plating is particularly so. It consists of alternating raised and lowered horizontal strakes, but the effect is not overly pronounced. Oddly, there are some vertical plate lines at the bow, though none elsewhere. A shallow armor belt is also evident over the center portion of the hull. Portholes are sharp, and not elongated or misshapen by the curvature of the plating at the bow. Subtle eyebrows for each porthole are evident as well. Some molded-on access ladders are present, as is a shelf for anchoring the torpedo booms and holding the torpedo netting. There are prominent towing fairleads at the bow and stern, access hatches at the stern for the Admiral’s walk and, perhaps most important of all, secondary casemates with properly vertical recesses. 

The one nit-pick is that my sample has the slightest sinkhole (a depression, really) to either side of the bow. It can be filled and sanded, though care must be taken so as not to diminish the offset hull plating. 

The hull scales out near perfectly. Kirishima’ s as-built particulars versus the scale and kit:

Overall Length:	214.58m/704’0”	1/700 scale OA length:	306.54mm	Kit OA length:	306.5mm
Waterline Length:	211.84m/695’0”	1/700 scale WL length:	302.63mm	Kit WL length:	303mm
Beam:	28.04m/92’0”	1/700 scale beam:	40.06mm	Kit beam:	40.25mm

In my opinion, the wood planking is exquisite for 1/700 scale. In fact, this may be the best representation of 1/700 wood planking I’ve ever come across, at least for an IJN warship. The seams are very subtly recessed, almost invisibly so, with similarly subtle butt ends, in a pattern that properly repeats every fifth plank. Frankly, this is in sharp contrast to the recessed planking seen on 1/700 Fujimi IJN BBs and CVs, which is considerably overscale and erroneously patterned, and yet considered by some to be “state of the art”. 

I attempted to use a digital caliper to record the width as best I could but found doing so near impossible. However, a comparison between the kit’s plank width and styrene strips of both .01” and .015” widths leads me to conclude that the planking is approximately 0.0125” wide. This is utterly in scale at 8.75 scale inches, and quite unexpected. Many serious kudos to Kajika for their planking efforts.

In case you zoned out reading the last two paragraphs, let me repeat myself: This is the most accurate 1/700 scale wood planked deck I’ve ever seen on an IJN model kit. And, I imagine that the same can be said for its three sister kits.

The hatches are properly shaped, with the larger ones having a slightly raised peak in the middle, and the mushroom vents are sharply made round. (Even if they are not proper mushroom shapes, they are not the usual soft shapes, either.) It would have been nice if Kajika had dispensed with the molded-on hawser reels on this deck (and on the main/forecastle deck), but at least the reels are properly small, though without any delineation of individual lines.  For more detailed reels, there are aftermarket alternatives in both plastic and photo etch. The deck piece itself is thick, which will likely add considerable stability to the hull when glued in place. 

My prior comments regarding the overall quality of the detailing, the wood deck planking, hatches, vents, and hawser reels apply here as well. Even the tops of the coaling hatches are segmented by tiny seams. This deck, as well as the main rear deck, appears to be identical to those used in the sister kits. 

The main barrels are molded in a way that allows each to be raised or lowered individually within the twin turret. They also have molded muzzle apertures, which is a nice touch. Less desirable are some subtle seam lines, which can be removed with some light sanding. As nice as the barrels are, replacement by a similar set of brass barrels is probably preferable. The 6” barrels seem very much to scale and are likely to be quite easy to bend. These are so much to scale that they are thinner than many 5” destroyer gun barrels from other kit manufacturers.   (Note: Kajika does make its own brass barrels in both sizes and offers them separately.) The casemates are very sharply molded, with siting ports.  The main turret bases have extensions that fit into the corresponding apertures in the main decks and would allow for the free rotation of the turret. The main turrets show large rivets holding the plating in place – a nice touch, though I’m not sure they were this plentiful in actuality.

With all that said, only the 15cm components are used off of this sprue. There are additional main battery components included on separate sprues specific to this kit, discussed further below. (Note that the main battery turrets for Kirishima and Haruna had round facings, whereas those for Kongo and Hei had angular facings. This sprue’s main mounts are angular and therefore specific to Kongo and Hiei.)

The torpedo net booms are thin and delicately rendered in the same manner as the boat booms. It looks like there are two spares, which is good, as one of these booms arrived broken. (I do find the instructions are a bit vague on identifying and properly attaching the booms.)

The detailing on all the small pieces is fine, precise and crisp. The large deck winches are beautifully rendered, as are many of the small pieces. The davits and auxiliary piping are thinner than typical for 1/700 kit.  The funnels are one piece (no seams to fill) and precisely shaped.  However, only the funnel marked K56 (#3 funnel) is used for this particular kit. The others are specific to the Kongo kit.  The funnel grills are molded with open spaces and very serviceable. Even the access ladders, solid as they may be, have individual steps. 

Detail and quality is the same as mentioned previously for the main armament on Sprue G. This turret, like all of Kirishima’ s turrets, has a rounded facing.

My prior comments regarding detailing and scale apply here as well. The upper masts and yardarms are particularly fine for 1/700 scale and will be prone to bending. They will look good on display, but I do not expect these to handle any sort of taut rigging. Kajika does sell some rigging material separately (which I think is Lycra based), but I have doubts whether or not these pieces could support any tension even using this material.  Stretched sprue would most likely work with the kit parts. Replacement with brass rod seems the best approach for those planning to rig the model with other materials.

The progressive assembly instructions are a bit on the small side, so careful attention must be paid to the parts actually indicated by number. Not particularly clear to me is the distinguishing between parts to be used for this kit versus the sister kits.  Though there is a graphic showing the layout of all the sprues, none of the individual pieces meant solely for other kits are blocked or greyed out. In my opinion, doing so would cut down on some potential confusion. 

In fact, I feel that the kind of detailing exhibited by this kit, particularly for the wood deck planking, puts the modernized versions of Kirishima issued by Fujimi to shame, as it shows what really can be done in this scale in this day and age. I also feel compelled to mention that the secondary casemate apertures are correct and straight. Admittedly this kit is about 30% more expensive than a comparable, modernized Kongo class Fujimi kit, but I suspect a lot of modelers would likely spend the extra money for better, more accurate details. 

This kit will be a nice companion piece to her sister ships and to modernized versions of her for fans of the class.  I would think fans of WWI battleships and battlecruisers will also be thrilled by this kit. If I had to guess where Kajika would go next with its new kits, I’d say as-built configurations of the other six contemporary IJN battleships would be the most likely candidates. These have never been addressed in plastic in 1/700 to my knowledge. But, boy, would I love to see Kajika issue a 1942 version of this ship. 

The retail price is $49.99, though this kit is not yet available in the US as of the end of June, 2018. Many thanks to FlyHawk Models for the review sample.