The were a pair of armored corvettes built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by British shipyards in the 1870s. A British offer to purchase the two ships during the Russo-Turkish War in 1878 was refused. They became training ships in 1887 and made training cruises to the Mediterranean and to countries on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The ships returned to active duty during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 where one participated in the Battle of the Yalu River and both in the Battle of Weihaiwei. The "Kongō"-class ships resumed their training duties after the war, although they played a minor role in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. They were reclassified as survey ships in 1906 and were sold for scrap in 1910 and 1912.