Shokasonjuku

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About Shokasonjuku

Shokasonjuku is the small private school where thinker Yoshida Shoin taught between 1857 and 1858 in eastern Hagi. In a little over a year, young men who became leaders of the Meiji Restoration and of the new government—such as Takasugi Shinsaku and Ito Hirobumi—studied there. Shoin argued that the country should study the West and modernize; he was executed by the shogunate in 1859.

The school is a single-story wooden building with a tiled roof, consisting of an eight-tatami room and another room, later added by the students, of just over ten tatami. The original structure can be seen from the open doors, with empty rooms and portraits of the students on the walls. UNESCO included it in the Meiji sites for its role in forming the men who modernized the nation’s industry.

The school stands on the grounds of Shoin Shrine, dedicated to Yoshida Shoin and built in the early 20th century. The precinct also contains the house where he was held under house arrest and a museum with his history, documents and letters.

Nearby are the house where Ito Hirobumi was born and Hagi’s reverberatory furnace, another element of the Meiji sites—a stone-and-brick chimney built in the mid-19th century to test cannon casting. The Matsumoto area, where these sites are located, also has Hagi pottery kilns.