History
Sendai’s founding is inseparable from one man: Date Masamune, the one-eyed daimyo (nicknamed “the One-Eyed Dragon”) who built his castle here in 1600 after backing the winning side at the Battle of Sekigahara. Masamune deliberately planted the city with trees as part of its original design — a practical windbreak measure that also became an aesthetic signature, producing the “Mori no Miyako” (City of Trees) identity Sendai still promotes today, most visibly along the broad, leafy Jozenji-dori avenue through the modern city center.
An early, ambitious embassy to Rome
Masamune’s most striking brush with the wider world came in 1613, when he sponsored the Keicho Embassy — a mission led by samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga that sailed from the Tohoku coast to Mexico, then on to Spain and Rome, where Hasekura met King Philip III and Pope Paul V. It remains one of the earliest and most ambitious diplomatic ventures any Japanese domain undertook toward Europe, decades before Japan’s long period of national isolation closed off that kind of direct contact for over two centuries.
Sendai, the Tohoku region, and 2011
As Tohoku’s largest city and clear regional hub, Sendai anchors the six- prefecture region both economically and administratively — Tohoku University, founded in 1907, is one of Japan’s oldest imperial universities and remains a major research draw. Sendai’s built-up center sits several kilometers inland and was largely spared the worst structural damage of the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, but the city’s own coastal wards, like the rest of the Tohoku coastline, were hit hard, and Sendai played (and continues to play) a major logistical role in the region’s ongoing recovery.
Getting there and getting around
Sendai Station is a major Tohoku Shinkansen stop, roughly 1 hour 30 minutes from Tokyo, and Sendai Airport connects to a handful of domestic and international routes. The city has a compact subway network and an extensive bus system; central Sendai is easily walkable, particularly along Jozenji-dori and the nearby covered shopping arcades.
