Travel Guide Hagi

Hagi is a peaceful city of 50,000 inhabitants built at the bottom of a bay where the Abugawa River flows. For lovers of eternal Japan, nostalgic of the Edo period, Hagi is the perfect city. This fishing port, nestled in a beautiful bay, has an old samurai district and a pottery industry that is known throughout Japan. In addition, Hagi played a decisive role in the installation of the Meiji restoration. In 1600, the Mōri families, Ukita and Shimazu, sided with Toyotomi in the Battle of Sekigahara, which pitted Toyotomi's supporters against those of Tokugawa. Terumoto Mōri had to become a monk to escape death, and his son ceded Hiroshima Castle to Masanori Fukushima before moving to Hagi. Deprived of their lands, they settled for the small provinces of Nagato and Suō. Later, their departure to Yamaguchi would plunge Hagi back into the torpor and loneliness of the remote provinces, but the Mōri family finally took its revenge, two centuries later, in 1868. Indeed, fierce defenders of the Meiji emperor, they precipitated the fall of the Tokugawa by participating financially and politically in the Meiji campaign to regain power. Motonori Mōri ceded his estates and income to the emperor. Another charismatic figure from Hagi was Mōshi Nijūikkai, more commonly known as Shōin Yoshida, as he was adopted by the Yoshida family. This samurai became the head of the Yamaga school and a military strategist. He was appointed to the Meirinkan, government of Chōshū. In Edo, he sided with the emperor in 1851, and attempted to board one of Commander Perry's ships at Yokohama (1854). He was discovered and executed at the age of 29, in 1859. On the other hand, the samurai Issei Maebara, minister of war in 1870, organized a rebellion in Hagi in 1876 to react against the government policy, which had abolished the privileges of samurai. He was also executed.