 Coming between the foreign-designed vessels of the earlier part of the century and the innovative and 'Special Type' destroyers of the 1930s, the "Minekaze" class was a significant transitional design for the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had carefully studied (but not taken over or given Japanese names to) the five German destroyers received as war reparations after World War I.These five had been the "T.181", "S.51", "S.60", "V.80" and "V.127", which were all then sold and broken up in Britain or Dordrecht.