Sufu Masanosuke was a Choshu han administrator and chief of the Justice faction in government, whose primary rival was the conservative "Mundane views faction" or Zokuran-ha. The Justice faction held only marginal control at the time Yoshida Shoin and his Sonjuku were becoming actively engaged in politics.

He opposed Yoshida Shoin's plans to assassinate Manabe Akikatsu - a Bakufu official sent to Kyoto to enforce the policy that later became known as the Ansei Purge in 1858. He ordered the house arrest of Shoin on 11/29/58 and his subsequent incarceration at Noyama Prison (in Hagi) on 12/5/58.

Sufu and Shoin, however, were not by any means hostile towards one another. The two had been on good terms prior to that incident. Shoin exonerated Sufu in a letter to Takasugi in on 5/13/59, when advising him to abandon plans to free him from prison.

"You know Sufu thinks well of me. You know that Sufu is a great personality, and you know how hard he works. If you look back on the affair of the last year, there were errors on Sufu's part, on my part, and on the part of many persons who used their offices in between... I really do not bear a grudge against Sufu."

Sufu, after Shoin's death, continued to assist the Sonjuku students greatly.

The Aumeisha

The "warbling of birds society" was formed by Sufu and his friends in 1845 while they were still at the clan school, the Meirinkan. This study group continued to meet long after Sufu and the others had matriculated, moving locations from the Meirinkan to a location closer to the castle. As Huber states, the Aumeisha was very much the Sonjuku of the 1840s in terms of composition and purpose.

The 18 regular members were samurai with modest stipends (21-173 koku) with the exception of Kuchiba Tokusube. Their reasons for the formation included 'dissatisfaction' with the Meirinkan education. Together, the men gathered "to argue together, and thereby investigate history, ancient and recent, and also the problems of current affairs." The Aumeisha would later dominate the Justice faction in the government, just as many from the Sonjuku would dominate han politics and country politics in the years to come.

The Aumeisha members welcomed Sonjuku students at their meetings -- Kusaka Genzui was among those who did attend several times, as did Yoshida's brother Sugi Umetaro (on behalf of Shoin perhaps). Meeting rosters included figures such as visiting activist Buddhist priest Utsunomiya Mokurin and Gessho, teacher of Kusaka genzui and Buddhist priest, rural educator and reformer..

Among the main attractions apparently for Sugi (and perhaps the others) was the library of the Aumeisha.

Perhaps the students as well as lead instructor Shoin benefitted intellectually from such a relationship.

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*From Huber's "The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan."