The government on Tuesday unveiled Japan's largest oil-recovery vessel, ordered by the Transport Ministry in the wake of a huge oil spill on the Sea of Japan coast three years ago.

The 4,663-ton Kaisho Maru, displayed at Tokyo Harbor, is part of a planned three-vessel oil-spill control task force that the ministry hopes will provide a speedy response in the event of an oil spill in Japanese coastal waters.

The Kaisho Maru will help guarantee quick response to oil spills around Japan.

The Transport Ministry has only one other vessel designed specifically to recover oil spilled at sea. The third, a 3,500-ton-class oil-recovery vessel, now under construction, is expected to be completed by autumn 2002.

"Once the three vessels are in operation, an oil-recovery vessel would be on the scene within 48 hours after an oil spill is reported anywhere in waters close to the Japanese archipelago," a Transport Ministry spokesman said.

According to ministry officials, the Kaisho Maru, built at a cost of 6.3 billion yen, will be commissioned in November following a series of shakedown runs.

The vessel will be used as a dredger in normal times and be under the control of the Transport Ministry's Kitakyushu office in charge of dredging work in the Kanmon Strait in southwestern Japan.

The Transport Ministry decided to beef up Japan's oil-spill control capability after the Russian tanker Nakhodka broke up and sank in the Sea of Japan in 1997 and spilled 5,000 kiloliters of fuel oil into the sea, polluting vast stretches of the Sea of Japan coastline.

New coast guard look

NAGASAKI (Kyodo) Four Japan Coast Guard patrol boats that have been repainted with the service's new official English name are easier to identify on the open seas, according to reports from boat crews.

Coast guard officials in the city of Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture, said the boats have proved popular since they appeared two months ago with Japan Coast Guard painted in blue on their white hulls.

The four repainted patrol boats are the Soya of Kushiro, Hokkaido; the Zao of Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture; the Miura of Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture; and the Hayato of Kagoshima Prefecture. An additional 168 boats will be repainted when they dock for hull inspections.

The redesigned lettering is the first since July 1984, they said.

The Japan Coast Guard, formerly called the Maritime Safety Agency, decided in early April to change its official English name to a title recognizable worldwide in an attempt to clarify the scope of its duties.