A museum built on the very slipway where the battleship Yamato was completed, its lobby dominated by a ten-metre model of the ship that gives the place its nickname.
At a glance
Formally the Kure Maritime Museum, this Hiroshima-prefecture institution opened on 23 April 2005 in a building designed by Kume Sekkei. It stands in Kure, the port city that built and lost the Imperial Japanese Navy’s largest battleship. The 1/10 scale Yamato model in the entrance hall gave the museum its popular name, and most visitors know it by that alone.
History
Kure was a shipbuilding city and home to the Kure Naval District. Yamato, flagship of the Combined Fleet, was completed here. She was sunk south of Kyushu in 1945. The museum was raised on that history, opening six decades later to explain both the ship and the city that made her. In February 2025 the building closed for renovation, due to reopen in April 2026. During the closure a nearby “antenna” site opened, showing selected exhibits and a replica Mitsubishi F1M seaplane.
What you see
The Yamato Hiroba room holds the great model, alongside displays on Kure’s shipbuilding and naval past. A large-objects gallery gathers a Mitsubishi A6M Zero, a Kaiten human torpedo, a Kairyū-class submarine and shells ranging up to 460 mm calibre. There is a full-scale replica of the 46 cm Type 94 gun breech and one of battleship Kongō’s boilers. A collection of Kaiten pilots’ suicide notes, swords and photographs sits quietly among the technical exhibits. Outside stands a 41 cm naval gun, plus an anchor, rudder and screw salvaged from battleship Mutsu. Behind the building, a wharf marks Yamato’s bridge in full-scale silhouette. West of the museum sits the deep-sea research vessel Shinkai and the actual lathe used to machine Yamato’s main guns.
Cultural significance
The museum treats Yamato as both engineering feat and cultural symbol, devoting a room to her afterlife in anime and film, notably the Space Battleship Yamato franchise. A 2015 digital survey of the wreck revealed the ship’s chrysanthemum crest, a detached turret and a five-metre propeller; the resulting nine-minute film runs in the museum’s theatre. Since 2015 the museum has held a sister-museum partnership with the USS Missouri Memorial Association in Pearl Harbor, marking the 70th anniversary of the war’s end. The naval game franchise Kantai Collection is an official partner, funding restoration of the historic gun-boring lathe and, during the 2025 closure, painting a mural over the construction hoarding.
Key facts
- Opened: 23 April 2005
- Architect: Kume Sekkei
- Location: Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan
- Closed for renovation: 17 February 2025 – 23 April 2026
- Centrepiece: 1/10 scale model of battleship Yamato
Practical information & getting there
You can reach the museum on foot from JR Kure Station. Kure City buses stop at “Youmetown Yamato Museum-mae,” and the site is also walkable from Kure Port. Note that the main building is closed for renovation until April 2026; a nearby antenna venue displays select exhibits, including a replica Mitsubishi F1M seaplane, in the meantime. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Kure Museum, with the retired submarine Akishio, sits immediately north.
Sources & resources
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