Hagi: Where Japan's Revolution Began
Hagi: where Japan's revolution began
Hagi is a small castle town on the rugged coast of southwest Honshu, Japan's main island. It sits between the two arms of the River Abu, facing the sea, with mountains behind it. It's so compact that 20 minutes on a bicycle in any direction gets you out of town or onto the water.
Why does a karate site care about Hagi? Because this quiet town was at the center of the upheaval that ended the samurai era. If you want to understand the Japan that Gichin Funakoshi found when he arrived in Tokyo in the 1920s, the story starts here, a lifetime earlier.
This page is based on a National Geographic feature by N. Taylor Gregg. The facts come from his article; the writing is ours.
Yoshida Shoin, "the tiger"
The central figure is Yoshida Shoin (1830 to 1859), a samurai teacher from the Choshu domain, whose capital was Hagi. His family ranked low among the samurai and had to farm to get by. He signed himself Tora, tiger, and explained why:
"Tora means tiger, and the virtue of the tiger is courage."
When Yoshida was born, Japan had been closed to the outside world for almost 200 years. By the time Commodore Perry's warships arrived in 1853, small groups of scholars were studying Western science through rangaku, "Dutch studies," named after the only Westerners allowed in the country. One of them, Sakuma Shozan, had a big influence on Yoshida with the slogan "Eastern ethics and Western science."
In 1854 Yoshida tried to get Perry to take him to America. Leaving Japan was a crime punishable by death. Perry refused, and Yoshida turned himself in. Even in prison he kept teaching.
Back in Hagi, he ran a tiny private school, the Shoka Sonjuku. Several of his students went on to lead the movement that restored power to the emperor in 1868, the Meiji Restoration. Yoshida didn't live to see it. The shogunate executed him in 1859, at 29. Shortly before his death he wrote that if his companions took up his task, "the seed of the future will not die."
His ideas were a mix that's still interesting today: universal education, reward for ability and an end to privilege, alongside a deep attachment to Japanese values such as sensitivity to nature and joy in a simple life. He also followed the Chinese philosopher Wang Yang-ming's idea that to know and not to act is not to know. (Wang Yang-ming's school also shaped Yasutsune Azato, one of Funakoshi's teachers, which is a nice connection.)
What you can see in Hagi
According to Gregg's account, a visitor to Hagi can find:
- The fields of Yoshida's birthplace. The farmhouse is gone, but the land his family worked is still farmed, with a view across the river and the tiled roofs to the castle grounds.
- His grave, a simple stone in the family cemetery, not far from the birthplace.
- The Shoka Sonjuku, Yoshida's little school, kept in a large memorial compound that draws crowds of school groups.
- The Shoin Jinja, a Shinto shrine dedicated to Yoshida.
- The samurai quarter, with long white walls topped with tiles, and the houses of Takasugi and other followers.
- The castle grounds. The Mori family built Hagi castle in 1604, after their lands were cut back for opposing the Tokugawa. Today you'll find the outer ramparts with their zigzag entrance, a moat and the stone foundations of the keep.
Gregg also met people keeping old arts alive in and around Hagi, including a teacher of traditional archery who taught that perfection comes from form, not score. Plenty of karate teachers would say the same about kata.
Sources
- N. Taylor Gregg, "Hagi: Where Japan's Revolution Began," National Geographic, June 1984 (Vol. 165, No. 6), pp. 751–773. Short quotations of Yoshida Shoin are as given in that article.
