The name means wave wind. Namikaze was a Nokaze sub-class destroyer of the Minekaze class, built at Maizuru Naval Arsenal. She was laid down on 7 November 1921, launched on 24 June 1922 and commissioned on 11 November 1922 in Destroyer Division 1 with Nokaze, Numakaze and the flagship Kamikaze. The division patrolled the China coast in 1938 and 1939.
At Pearl Harbor she was at the Ominato Guard District, patrolling the Hokkaido and Kuril coasts. At Midway she was in the reserve force for the Aleutians operation, which never left Japanese waters. She patrolled and escorted from Ominato through July 1943, when she was lent to the Fifth Fleet for the Kiska evacuation but only did backup duties. She was slightly damaged in a collision with the patrol vessel Manei Maru No. 7 at Otaru on 6 November 1943. In December 1943 she moved to Moji to escort convoys to French Indochina, and in March 1944 she went back to Ominato.
On 21 August 1944 USS Seal torpedoed her north of Iturup and severed her stern. Kamikaze towed her to Otaru. She was sent to Maizuru and rebuilt as a carrier for Kaiten manned torpedoes, with three of her four main guns and all her torpedo tubes removed. The refit was finished on 1 February 1945, and there is no record of her launching a Kaiten in action. From 16 June 1945 she swept for mines laid by B-29s from Ube, and she was at Kure at the surrender.
She was removed from the Navy List on 5 October 1945, served as a repatriation ship from 1 December 1945 to 1947, and on 3 October 1947 was turned over to the Republic of China and renamed Shen Yang. She served at Qingdao until the city fell to the communists, then from Taiwan until she was scrapped in 1960.
Sources: Wikipedia, Japanese destroyer Namikaze, rewritten here.