[2] During the Bakumatsu period, the Tokugawa shogunate was increasingly alarmed by incursions by foreign warships into Japanese territorial waters, fearing that these kurofune warships would attempt the end Japan's self-imposed national isolation policy by force, or would attempt an invasion of Japan by landing hostile military forces.

About five meters from the top, it appears to be divided into two branches, but in reality these are two independent chimneys side-by-side.

Together with the lack of any historical records of any cannon produced at this site, it can be concluded that this reverberatory furnace was used for testing, but not for actual production.

[3] As with the Nirayama Reverberatory Furnace in Izunokuni, Shizuoka, the design of this furnace appears to have been taken from a Dutch book, Het Gietwezen in's Rijks Ijzer - geschutgieterij te Luik, which the Japanese had received via the Dutch trading post at Nagasaki.

The height of the chimney described in that book is 16 meters, making the Hagi Reverberatory Furnace a 70 percent scale model.