Shokasonjuku Academy

Shokasonjuku is a single-storey wooden building of two rooms, one of 8 tatami mats and one of 10.5, standing in the grounds of Shoin Shrine on the east side of Hagi. It looks like a farm outbuilding, which is close to what it was. The school name came from Yoshida Shoin's uncle, Tamaki Bunnoshin, who taught local boys at home. Shoin, under house arrest at his family's Sugi house for trying to stow away on one of Perry's ships, began lecturing in his confinement room in 1856. When students outgrew it, a shed on the family plot was repaired as an 8-mat schoolroom in November 1857, and the 10.5-mat room was added in March 1858. Shoin taught here for only a little over a year before he was arrested again and executed in Edo in 1859. Among the young men who passed through were Takasugi Shinsaku, Kusaka Genzui, Ito Hirobumi, later the first prime minister, and Yamagata Aritomo.

It may seem an odd fit as one of the 23 parts of the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, inscribed in July 2015, next to blast furnaces and coal mines. The listing's argument is about ideas: Shoin pressed for coastal defence and for learning Western industry and technology, and his students, Ito among the Choshu Five who went to study in Britain in 1863, carried that into Meiji government policy.

The visit itself is short. You stand outside and look into bare rooms through the open side; there is no fee and no ticket. Ten minutes is enough unless a tour group is three deep at the rail, which is common on weekends. Give the rest of an hour to the grounds: Shoin's confinement room at the old Sugi house is a few steps away, and Ito Hirobumi's thatched former home is about a 4-minute walk. If you want the rest of the World Heritage story in Hagi, the old castle town around Hagi Castle Ruins and the Hagi Reverberatory Furnace are also components.