was the lead ship of the two-ship of armoured cruisers in the Imperial Japanese Navy. She was named after Mount Tsukuba located in Ibaraki prefecture north of Tokyo. On 28 August 1912, Tsukuba was re-classified as a battlecruiser. Background Construction of the Tsukuba-class cruisers was ordered under the June 1904 Emergency Fleet Replenishment Budget of the Russo-Japanese War, spurred on by the unexpected loss of the battleships and to naval mines in the early stages of the war. These were the first major capital ships to be designed and constructed entirely by Japan in a Japanese shipyard, albeit with imported weaponry and numerous components. However, Tsukuba was designed and completed in a very short time, and suffered from numerous technical and design problems, including strength of its hull, stability and mechanical failures. The ship was reclassified as a battlecruiser in 1912. Design The Tsukuba-class design had a conventional armored cruiser hull design, powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, with twenty Miyabara boilers, yielding design speed of and a range of at . During speed trials in Hiroshima Bay prior to commissioning, Tsukuba attained a top speed of . In terms of armament, the Tsukuba-class was one of the most heavily armed cruisers of its time, with four 12-inch 41st Year Type guns as the main battery, mounted in twin gun turrets to the fore and aft, along the centerline of the vessel. Secondary armament consisted of twelve guns and twelve 4.7-inch 41st Year Type guns, and four QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns. Service record Tsukuba was laid down on 14 January 1905, launched 26 December 1905 and commissioned on 14 January 1907 at Kure Naval Arsenal, with Captain Heitarō Takenouchi as her chief equipping officer and first commander. Shortly after commissioning, and with Vice Admiral Ijuin Gorō on board, Tsukuba and Chitose were sent on a voyage to the United States to attend the International Naval Review by President Theodore Roosevelt as a part of Jamestown Exposition of 1907, the tricentennial celebrations marking the founding of the Jamestown Colony. They then traveled on to Portsmouth, England to pay respect to the fellow Royal Navy in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and attended the 25th anniversary of Kiel Regatta in Kiel, Germany, where she received the imperial visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II. She then visited Flushing and Ostend in Flanders, Holland; Brest and Bordeaux in France; Vigo, Lisbon, Naples, Malta, Venice and Trieste