Sendai Tourist Attractions

The city of Sendai, once a castle town, lies in northern Honshu 6mi/ 10km from the Pacific coast. It owes its name as the "city of forests" to its situation between wooded hills. Sendai is the chief town of Miyagi prefecture and the political, cultural and economic center of the Tohoku region.The city's main industries are foodstuffs, woodworking, electrical apparatus and metal processing. Traditional craft products are lacquerware and wooden dolls.HistoryIn 1602 the powerful Daimyo Date Masamune (1566-1636) built Aobajo Castle, and Sendai became the center of one of the largest fiefs in northern Japan. The ambitious Masamune, know as the One-eyed Shogun (Dokuganryu Shogun), was one of the last to hold out against the rising power of Toyotomi Hideyoshi; and it was only when Hideyoshi took Odawara Castle in 1590 and thus broke the resistance of Hojo Ujimasa that Masamune brought himself to swear an oath of allegiance to Hideyoshi. When, after Hideyoshi's death, Tokugawa Ieyasu was victorious in the struggle for his succession Masamune threw in his lot with the new ruler and took part in his Korean campaign and in the Siege of Osaka Castle in 1615. During the persecution of Christians initiated by the second Tokugawa Shogun, Hidetada, Masamune secured the liberation of the Franciscan friar Luis Sotelo (1574-1624), whom he later permitted to return to Europe together with an embassy he was sending to the West. The history of the Date clan became famous through the Kabuki play "Sendai Hagi".