Manzeki-Seto canal

 water, strait / channel / passage / narrows, invisible, 1900_construction

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fter the First Sino-Japanese War ended with the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Japan felt humiliated when the Triple Intervention of the three great powers of Germany, France, and Russia forced it to return the valuable Liaodong Peninsula to China under threat of force. Consequently, the Japanese leadership correctly anticipated that a war with Russia or another Western imperial power was likely. Between 1895 and 1904, the Imperial Japanese Navy blasted the Manzeki-Seto canal 25 metres (82 feet) wide and 3 metres (9.8 feet) deep; it was later expanded to 40 metres (130 feet) wide and 4.5 metres (14.8 feet) deep through a mountainous rocky isthmus of the island between Asō Bay to the west and Tsushima Strait to the east, technically dividing the island into three islands. Strategic concerns explain the scope and funding of the canal project by Japan during an era when it was still struggling to establish an industrial economy. The canal enabled the Japanese to move transports and warships quickly between their main naval bases in the Seto Inland Sea (directly to the east) via the Kanmon and Tsushima Strait into the Korea Strait or to destinations beyond in the Yellow Sea.
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