The first battleships built for the renewed Eight @-@ Eight Fleet Program were the two dreadnoughts of the Kawachi class , ordered in 1907 and laid down in 1908 . In 1910 , the Navy put forward a request to the Diet ( parliament ) to secure funding for the entirety of the program at once . Because of economic constraints , only four battlecruisers and a single battleship of the Fusō class were ultimately approved by the Diet . Three more Fusō @-@ class ships ( Yamashiro , Ise , and Hyūga ) were approved and all three were ordered in April 1913 . While Yamashiro was laid down later that year , the IJN lacked the funding to proceed with the construction of Ise and Hyūga until the Diet authorized additional funding for the ships in July 1914 .