JAPAN AND IT'S TOY (IRONCLAD) BOATS

The Japanese fascination with things both steel and steam – military ships and old school railway locomotives – possibly stems back to their initial shock and awe when Commodore Matthew Perry waltzed up to Yokosuka, not far from Tokyo, in 1853 with a combination of both (a fleet of black-hulled steam frigates) to force open the country to the West.

Many elderly gents in Japan also have a penchant for historic battleships, in particular two of them that regularly pop up in conversations when we talk about the country’s own military past.

Remember Uchu Senkan Yamato, anyone?

Most Americans, Australians and Europeans probably won't since the anime TV series was first screened under the lacklustre ulterior title of Star Blazers outside Japan from around 1979.

In the Western version there was deviously reduced violence, toned-down dialogue, and the complete deletion of the partaking of sake. Alcoholism and sexual innuendo were whitewashed, clipped out on the editing room floor, and/or erased from the English dub.

Actually better called Space Battleship Yamato in our lingo, the series was created by the great Leiji Matsumoto (the man behind Captain Harlock and a swag of Daft Punk videos) and screened on TVs in Japan from 1974-75.

It ended up being hugely successful over here, probably because it included the violence, alcoholism and sexual innuendo that so worried the licensees in America.

The space opera tells the story of the beleaguered inhabitants of Earth who, under hostile alien attack, secretly build a spacecraft inside the ruins of the WW2 Japanese battleship Yamato and resurrect it for duty in the cosmos.

That’s actually a real ship, by the way, and one of the two I mentioned above that people often refer to when it comes to off-the-cuff historic military icons.

The real Battleship Yamato

The Yamato was the flagship of the Japanese fleet in WW2 and, along with her sister ship Musashi, was apparently the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleship ever constructed.  Think 72,800 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 18.1-inch main guns, measuring up at a quarter of a kilometre in length.

Neither ship, however, survived the war. The Yamato was sunk (by at least eleven torpedoes and eight bombs) in April 1945 on its way to Okinawa, with the loss of over 2,000 of its crew.

Anyway, getting back to the vessel’s fictitious second incarnation in Space Battleship Yamato, the 90-minute cinematic spin-off that was released in 1978 outclassed even Star Wars at the Japanese box office (George Lucas’ epic hit these shores a few months after the rest of the known world), and quite understandably there've been a wad of sequels of the adventures of the space-trekking vehicle since then.

The Yamato iconography – for both the spacecraft and the characters – is massive here in Japan, and it’s even better known than the battleship that served as its source material.

While there was a 2005 movie based on the terrestrial Yamato and directed by Junya Sato (The Bullet Train) – made with a budget of ¥2,500,000,000 (about $30m) – now there’s this: a live-action rebake of Space Battleship Yamato that hits cinemas this month, probably as you read these very words, and is one of the costliest films ever made in Japan.

It’s directed by Takashi Yamazaki (Returner) and stars J-pop band SMAP’s Takuya Kimura (Love and Honor), Aya Ueto (Azumi), Tsutomu Yamazaki (Departures), and Japanese favourite – but someone I just can't warm to; maybe it's the use of the single name? – Koyuki (The Last Samurai).

Having director Yamazaki “return” to sci-fi action after a long stint doing more popular domestic comedy-drama (the Always double-header and The Animal Doctors) is possibly the greatest thing to happen to this genre since 2004, when Ryuhei Kitamura unleashed Godzilla: Final Wars and Kazuaki Kiriya pushed through Casshern. Yamazaki's earlier work Returner (2002) may have been flawed, but it still rocked on a lot of levels and bears up to repeated viewing.

While the original anime predated both Star Wars and the original 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica, the previews for this new version of Yamato do intimate that the makers have indulged in much viewing of Ron Moore's recent Galactica reinvention – which, really, can only be a good thing.






While waiting for some distant time when this flick hits cinema screens in the Western world, there’s that second historic Japanese military ship to throw up for consideration.

The Battleship Mikasa

 The Mikasa was a pre-dreadnought battleship ordered from Britain by Japan in 1898, and took three years to complete at the cost of £880,000 (¥8.8 million). Upon arrival in these waters the ship ended up becoming the flagship of Admiral Heihachiro Togo, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Grand Fleet during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).



Unlike the Yamato, this one isn’t a demolished hulk at the bottom of the sea.

Named after Mount Mikasa in Nara, the Mikasa is in fact the last remaining pre-dreadnought ship in the world, a survivor of the Russian conflict, running aground in fog in 1921, decommissioning later that year, retirement as a memorial ship in 1926, bombing in WW2, and extensive dismantling during Japan's demilitarization thereafter.

Restoration work, in conjunction with the U.S. Navy, brought the old lady back to life and she was opened to the public in 1961. Now it's a nifty museum with its own cinema, models, paintings and documents, many of the compartments look as they did in Togo's time, and there're some hilarious mannequins ‘manning’ cannons.



The main guns (seen here with a ring-in unsuspecting live bystander to get a gist of their size) had a range of 10 kilometers and fired projectiles weighing 400 kilograms. It took 40 people to operate them, surrounded by armour weighing in at around 50 tons.



The ship was also the major setting for Nihonkai Daikaisen: Umi Yukaba (1983).

Variously known in English as Battle of the Japan Sea and Battle Anthem, it tells the story of a young musician assigned to Mikasa’s shipboard band, and depicts the action-packed Battle of Tsushima Straits in 1905 – where the Mikasa led the combined Japanese fleet into one of the most decisive naval battles in history, almost annihilating their Russian foes.

The movie starred the great Toshiro Mifune as Admiral Togo; it was directed by Toshio Masuda, who helped make Tora! Tora! Tora! in 1970 as well working on the Space Battleship Yamato anime series – and was involved as the producer on its 2009 reboot Rebirth Yamato. 



There's also an NHK TV drama called Sakanoue no Kumo, screened last year, which portrays a rapidly modernizing Meiji Japan (1867-1915) and has extensive location and press shots around the Mikasa.

Yes, the Japanese do like their toy boats. But, then again, so do we.