Sorry for "bumping" a very old thread, but there's a good reason for it! This week I finally managed to track down one of these kits on eBay UK (paid about £25 for it including shipping, not bad for such a scarce kit).
The kit arrived today - it's definitely NOT a reboxing of the Revell Alabama/Kearsarge or anything else (it's significantly smaller than the Revell kits, at about 2' overall when complete, though the scale - 1/100 - is similar). The hull mouldings look as good as anything Imai have produced, and the spars are reasonable, but the deck and smaller detail parts are rather chunky and lacking in fine detail. The shrouds/ratlines are moulded in rubbery flexible plastic, vacform sails are included (the ship is rigged as a three-masted barque)
Oddly, there are no guns, though they're shown in the box art! They weren't simply missing from my kit, as the instruction booklet doesn't show them.The kit does appear to represent the original ship rather than the twice-size modern replica, all the deck fittings look original as does the two-bladed propellor.
All of Kanrin Maru's guns appear to have been in broadside gun ports, with no swivelling mounts. Not sure what guns it carried; if they were all smoothbores, I should be able to kitbash some suitable ones from carriages + barrels in the spares box.
For anyone who's interested, I'll take some photos next week and put up a basic preview page on my website (hopefully replaced by a full review in future)