 The IJN considered a battle fleet of eight modern battleships and eight modern armored cruisers necessary for the defense of Japan , and the government adopted that policy in 1907 . This was the genesis of the Eight @-@ Eight Fleet Program , the development of a cohesive battle line of 16 capital ships less than eight years old . Advances in naval technology like the British battleship HMS Dreadnought and the battlecruiser HMS Invincible forced the IJN to several times re @-@ evaluate the ships that it counted as modern . By 1910 , the IJN considered none of its current ships to be modern and restarted the program in 1911 with orders for the Fusō @-@ class dreadnoughts and the Kongō @-@ class battlecruisers . By 1915 , the IJN was halfway to its goal and wanted to order four more dreadnoughts , but the Diet rejected its plan , and the 1916 budget authorized only one dreadnought , later named Nagato , and two battlecruisers . Later that year , American President Woodrow Wilson announced plans for 10 additional battleships and six battlecruisers , and the following year the Diet authorized three more dreadnoughts in response , one of which would later be named Mutsu . 
