One glance at the news will tell Japan is a very strategically located island these days, what with a rising China, a resurgent Russia, the DPRK missile program, and disputes over the air and sea space of north Asia. So it was, too, all through the Cold War. Japan has the deep blue Pacific and the USA on one side, and on the other, two superpowers and one rogue state just a very short distance across the water. No surprise, then, that anti-submarine warfare is near the top of the country’s military priority list.

Apart from its around 100 P-3C Orion ASW patrol planes - a fleet roughly the size of the United States’ fleet covering a far larger coastline - it has 18 attack submarines and a large surface fleet which now includes four large helicopter carriers with good ASW capabilities. 

The little Destroyer Escort Chikugo fits into that heritage. Eleven of these diminutive craft were built, entering service in 1971. The last one retired as recently as 2003. These were the first Japanese destroyer escorts (these days usually referred to as corvettes, an even smaller ship than a frigate) to mount the ASROC weapon. That’s a missile that then drops a homing torpedo, allowing a quick strike against a suspected submarine up to 20 kilometres away (at which distance a torpedo is a bit too slow to catch the target).

Chikugo and her sisters were quite literally built around ASROC, which is the box shaped fitting just behind the funnel. There were also two triple tube launchers for more torpedoes, and then a twin 3-inch/76mm gun up front and a little twin 40mm Bofors at the back. These ships were very lightly armed against air attack - the twin Bofors being a relic from the early days of WW2. Most of these ships served until the late 1990s and a few into the 21st century. Good luck defending yourself against air attack in that era with those weapons! 

This is one of the great series of 1/700 kits of Japanese Maritime Self Defence Forces (JMSDF) made by a few different manufacturers, in this case Pit Road. It's nicely moulded and well detailed for the scale. Impressively, if somewhat strangely, it also comes with a few extras: an F-104, and F-86, and an S-2 Tracker. Even more oddly, given this is an ASW corvette, you also score some JGSDF (Ground Self Defence Force) vehicles, notably three different kind of tank, a SAM launcher, and a howitzer and a big truck.