Perhaps not many know how 1/700 started and for example befofe the waterline existed, there was a Yamato 1/700 by

Brand:	Marusan
Title:	Yamato
Number:	507
Scale:	1:700
Released:	1963

In 1971, Japanese manufactures started to produce a series of 1/700 scale water line ship kits. In this scale, approximately 1 inch equals 60 scale feet.This series steadily expanded over the years. At the beginning, only ships of the Japanese Navy were available in the series, but later American, British and German navy subjects were also included. Between 1977-1979, Matchbox released a small number of British, German and US waterline ship kits, they were designed to be made of different colors of plastic so that painting was not required.
Due to the large range of water line kits available in this scale, it became popular and now widely considered as a 'standardized scale' in ship modelling. Today there are many companies outside Japan producing 1/700 scale ships as well, such as the Chinese companies Trumpeter and Dragon Models. Various aftermarket photo-etched detailing parts are also widely available for adding fine details to ship models.
Water Line Series
The Water Line Series was created by the Shizuoka Plastic Model Manufacturers Association in May 1971. It is a collaborative effort by three manufacturers to produce constant scale models of most of the ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War 2, in their first series, and then an ongoing collection of 1/700-scale kits of warships of the world. It started with four manufacturers (Tamiya, Aoshima, Hasegawa and Fujimi), but Fujimi separated in 1992 and made their own line named Sea Way Model Series. As the series name suggests, the models are produced only with the portion visible above the water, that enable them to be displayed as though they were at sea. Today there are over 180 products in the series, with most of them being ships from various WWII navies.

Mike Bartel The next serious effort after the Japanese Big Four and Matchbox was Green Max of Japan, with their 1/700 buildings, dockyard accessories and a few ships: Fletcher, O and Z class destroyers. These were later sold by Pit-Road, who did their own series of 1/700 JMSDF ships in plastic in the 1980s. DML's cold war submarines from the 1980s There wasn't much going on in 1/700 plastic until the re-tooling efforts of the 1990s started in earnest. We did get the two Albatross Models destroyers (Gearing and Sumner) as plastic kits in 1989. The early 1990s was when the 1/700 resin market really took off. I was part of that starting in 1993, and it has continued for me to this day.

Aoshima