Nirayama Reverberatory Furnace

National Historic Site in 1922.^[1] and was later designed as a component of the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining, which received UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2015.^[2]

kurofune warships would attempt to end the Japanese self-imposed national isolation policy by force, or would attempt an invasion of Japan by landing hostile military forces. Numerous feudal domains were ordered to establish fortifications along their coastlines with coastal artillery

Edo Bay in 1839.^[4] As early as 1842, Egawa attempted to build a furnace to cast cannon in the village of Nirayama in the Izu Peninsula. After sending a student to study the design of a furnace which had been developed in Saga Domain based on Dutch technology, construction of a reverberatory furnace and factory to cast cannon was begun in Shimoda in 1853. However, after an American sailor from the Perry Expedition trespassed on the site, it was relocated to the more isolated location of Nirayama. It was completed in 1855, the year of Egawa Hidetatsu's death, and work was continued by his son, Egawa Hidetoshi and completed in 1857. Egawa Hidetoshi was also an engineer, and had been involved in the construction of similar reverberatory furnace in Saga Domain, and he invited 11 engineers from Saga to assist in the project. The first cannon was cast in 1858 and the facility was used until 1864.^[5]

refractory bricks made from clay from the Amagi Mountains, on a stone base of Izu green tuff, with a height of 15.7 meters. The surface of the chimney was finished with plaster at the time of construction. The design of the furnaces was taken from a Dutch book, Het Gietwezen in's Rijks Ijzer - geschutgieterij te Luik, which the Japanese had received via the Dutch trading post