 The first battleships built for the renewed Eight @-@ Eight Fleet Program were the two dreadnoughts of the <unk> class , ordered in 1907 and laid down in 1908 . In 1910 , the Navy put forward a request to the Diet ( parliament ) to secure funding for the entirety of the program at once . Because of economic constraints , only four battlecruisers and a single battleship of the <unk> class were ultimately approved by the Diet . Three more <unk> @-@ class ships ( <unk> , <unk> , and <unk> ) were approved and all three were ordered in April 1913 . While <unk> was laid down later that year , the <unk> lacked the funding to proceed with the construction of <unk> and <unk> until the Diet authorized additional funding for the ships in July 1914 . 
