5 Kosen Colleges to Use New Training Ships to Provide Aid During Disasters; Designed to Carry Up to 50 Evacuees per Vessel

The Yomiuri Shimbun

6:00 JST, March 30, 2025

The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry is providing new navigation training ships, which are specially equipped for providing assistance to those in disaster areas, to each of Japan’s five national institutes of technology with courses for training ship crew.

Known as kosen, the colleges will be able to dispatch the training ships for relief missions in disaster-hit areas by providing aid from the sea. Each of the ships will have rooms where evacuees can stay for a prolonged period and will be able to accommodate up to about 50 evacuees, not including crew.

Construction of the last of the five ships will take place in fiscal 2025, which starts on Tuesday. The ministry earmarked a total of ¥24.2 billion for the construction project.

The five kosen colleges each have one navigation training ship for use by their students. Existing training ships will all be replaced by the end of fiscal 2026.

Conventional training ships are not designed to be able to provide disaster relief, and the facilities inside them — study rooms and accommodation for the students — reflect that. Based on the government’s Fundamental Plan for National Resilience compiled in 2014, the ministry decided to provide training ships with relief aid functions and began building the new training ships in fiscal 2021.

Though details of the interiors do vary a little among the new ships, they share such equipment as shower rooms that can be used by dozens of evacuees per day; rooms for women, which can be locked with a code, and rooms for up to four family members; equipment capable of transporting and supplying water for daily use; and equipment to desalinate sea water.

The new ships will also have wireless access points for mobile phones and small aid boats to carry supplies to locations that the training ships cannot approach.

So far, a new ship has been provided to three kosen colleges in Yamaguchi, Ehime and Mie prefectures. A ship to be provided to one in Toyama Prefecture in fiscal 2025 is under construction, while construction of another to be provided to a college in Hiroshima Prefecture in fiscal 2026 will start next fiscal year.

Each of the kosen colleges will dispatch its training ship based on respective accords with nearby local governments regarding the transportation of supplies in the event of a disaster. They may also dispatch their training ships at their own discretion.

Training ships dispatched from the Ehime and Hiroshima colleges transported doctors and nurses to damaged areas in the wake of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake. The ships also conducted water supply and other relief missions in the wake of a torrential rain disaster in western Japan in 2018.

Following the Noto Peninsula Earthquake last year, the Toyama college’s training ship transported about 50,000 tons of drinking water to Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture.

Principal Yoshiaki Kunieda said, “We found the Nanao city government was seeking aid goods via its website, and we contacted it before dispatching our ship.”

A 71-year-old man in Nanao, who served as an administrator of the shelters in the city, said, “At that time, water was more necessary than anything else, as there was no running water. It was greatly helpful.”

An official of the ministry said: “Utilizing training ships is one of the relief activities educational institutes can perform. Through loading and unloading supply goods, it is expected that students can learn how important their contributions to society are.”