The men who made the Meiji Restoration were disproportionately from Hagi. Yoshida Shoin, whose private academy produced a generation of revolutionary thinkers; Ito Hirobumi, Japan's first prime minister; Yamagata Aritomo, the architect of the modern military — all were from this castle town on the Yamaguchi coast. The transformation of Japan from a feudal society to a modern state was, in significant part, imagined and organized here. Hagi preserves this history in unusually complete form. The castle district, the samurai residential quarters, the site of Shoin's academy — these remain as places rather than reconstructions, and the city has been careful about the kind of development that would compromise their character. Walking through Hagi on an ordinary afternoon, you move through architecture that the people who made modern Japan moved through as children. The relocation experience programs available in Hagi offer the opportunity to stay in traditional townhouses, visit Hagi yaki pottery workshops, and understand the city as a place where people live rather than a museum of the Meiji period. The city's combination of historical weight, craft tradition, agricultural character — Hagi is a significant citrus-growing area — and coastal location makes it one of the more coherent environments for extended stays in western Japan.