TALES FROM HISTORY

Yoshida Shoin — 19th Century Hero from the Tiny Town of Hagi

Mentor to Japan’s Meiji Restoration leaders

Portrait of Yoshida Shoin. Artist unknown. (Public domain)

Hagi

The quietness of the fishing town of Hagi, in southwest Honshu, belies its illustrious past. Hagi is the birthplace of many of the men who laid the foundations for modern Japan and the location of the school that formed their ideas. Their teacher was Yoshida Shōin, and his brief but impactful life is inextricably tied to Hagi and his school, Shōka Sonjuku, The School Under the Pines. Among Yoshida’s students were greats of the Meiji government, including the military reformer Takasugi Shinsaku and Itō Hirobumi, Japan’s first prime minister.

Built on a delta opening to the Sea of Japan, Hagi’s locale has made it an ideal home for fishermen for millennia. Records dating from the Muromachi period (1336–1573) tell of the Yoshimi, retainers of the Ōuchi clan, building the first small fort in Hagi. Despite its early origins, the town remained quiet and secluded until the start of the Edo era (1603–1867).

Today, Hagi has been left behind in much of the modernization of Japan. An hour from the nearest airport or Shinkansen station, Hagi is a town of 42,000 residents, with a steady population decline of 1,000 annually for the past 15 years…