[2][3][4][5] The name "Shuyu" was taken from a passage in "The Charge to Prince Weizi" from Shangshu, a history text from ancient China.

[6] The school logo Rokkosei (Six-Light-Star) is a reference to a poem by Shu Shunsui (1600–1682), and is shaped after the North Star.

When Kuroda Naritaka (younger brother of Tokugawa Ienari, the eleventh shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate) became the 9th lord of Kuroda-han at a young age in 1783, the advisory board summoned two renowned scholars of the domain, Takeda Sadayoshi and Kamei Nanmei, to each build a school in order to pass on their forebears’ scholastic ambition to the future generation.

The 11th lord Nagahiro Kuroda was especially concerned with the education of his people throughout his life, and was particularly attentive to new cultures arriving from the Occident.

Because han-schools were limited to elite students from privileged samurai families, they were to be abolished for a more democratic school system open for all.

All classes were taught in English, and students studied Anglophone literature, Euro-American history, and Science using English-American textbooks.

[10][11][12] In 1897, Natsume Sōseki visited Shuyukan to observe the classes, as he was good friends with the first headmaster, Aritaka Kumamoto.

The same year, another graduate Tetsuo Hamuro won the gold medal in 200 meter breaststroke at the Berlin Olympics.

Under the occupation of GHQ who strongly discouraged any form of tradition that hinted the legacy of Japan's feudal and militant past, even to keep the name "Shuyukan" was impossible without the extraordinary efforts of its alumni.