She was ordered in 1885 from the shipbuilder Yarrows in London, Great Britain, where she was built in parts along Japanese specifications, and then assembled in Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, Japan.

[1] When launched in 1887, Kotaka, at 203 tons, was the largest torpedo boat in the world, and "was the forerunner of torpedo-boat destroyers that appeared a decade later".

In the following years, the Imperial Japanese Navy equipped itself with much smaller torpedo boats of French design, but in her trials in 1899, Kotaka demonstrated that she could go beyond a role of coastal defense, and was capable of following larger ships on the high seas.

[3] According to The Engineer dated 2 July 1886, an item reported that the British shipyard of Messrs. Yarrow & Co. at Poplar built for account of the Japanese government a torpedo boat of which the design was not the usual type.

She was larger as the torpedo boats until then built while her vulnerable parts including the machinery were protected against machine-gun fire by 1" armour made of steel.