IJN Itsukushima was a Matsushima class cruiser designed and built for the Imperial Japanese Navy in France. She was Laid down in Januarary 1888, launched in July 1889 and then completed in 1891. She was designed around the French naval doctrine of Jeune Ecole with the intention of using lots of smaller ships to overwhelm the larger ships, in her case the target was the Imperial Chinese Navy. She came equiped with smaller guns ranging from 1 pounders to 120mm guns and then a massive 320mm gun was mounted up front. However as it turned out the massive guns recoil was a step too far for the small hull, at least when broadside on. She would take part in two seperate wars, the first Sino-Japanese war and the Russio-Japanese war. The first she would form the main backbone of the Japanese navy at the battle of the Yalu river, where she enguaged the two Chinese Ironclads Dingyuan and Zhenyuan with limited sucess and taking moderate damage in return. In the later she would take part in the battle of Tsushima.