Ansaldo & C., which was hoping to profit from the need for the world's navies to modernize towards heavily armored steam warships.

Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships states that they were ordered by the Italian Navy,[1] while naval historian Robert Scheina writes that it was actually Argentina.

[2] In any case, Argentina originally planned to name them Mitre and Roca, then Rivadavia and Mariano Moreno, before they sold them to the Imperial Japanese Navy before final completion in 1904, where they were renamed the Kasuga and Nisshin.

She was bombed and sunk by US Navy carrier aircraft at Yokosuka 18 July 1945, raised and scrapped in 1948.

After 1922, as part of the Washington Naval Treaty she was partially disarmed and used as a training ship.