Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Tokugawa shogunate ruling Japan pursued a policy of isolating the country from outside influences.

Foreign trade was maintained only with the Dutch and the Chinese and was conducted exclusively at Nagasaki under a strict government monopoly.

In 1844, King William II of the Netherlands sent a letter urging Japan to end the isolation policy on its own before change would be forced from the outside.

[2] Following the July 1853 visit of Commodore Perry, and intense debate erupted within the Japanese government on how to handle the unprecedented threat to the national’s capital, and the only universal consensus was that steps be taken immediately to bolster Japan’s coastal defenses.

Chōyō Maru was a three-masted wooden-hulled corvette with a schooner rig, and with an auxiliary one-cylinder coal-fired 100 horsepower (75 kW) reciprocating steam engine turning a twin screws.

In 1861, she was captained by Yatabori Ko and in 1862 participated in a colonization expedition to the Ogasawara Islands to solidify Japanese claims to that archipelago.

During the Naval Battle of Hakodate Bay on 26 April 1869, she engaged Kaiten Maru, firing over 40 shots from her cannon.