Sendai

Sendai began as a castle town in 1600, when Date Masamune, lord of a domain covering much of northern Honshu, chose a bluff above the Hirose River for a new fortress and laid out a town below it on a grid. He had fought his way to control of the north as a young man, arriving too late to challenge the unification of Japan, and turned to building instead: a castle without a great keep, a mausoleum for himself on a wooded hill, shrines and temples, and an irrigation canal that brought water into the town. In 1613 he sent Hasekura Tsunenaga across the Pacific and on to Madrid and Rome, one of the few Japanese embassies to Europe before the country closed.

The Date ruled the Sendai domain, one of the largest in Japan, until the Meiji Restoration. In 1868 the domain led the northern alliance that fought the new imperial government in the Boshin War, lost, and was heavily penalised. The castle buildings were dismantled; the town became a garrison and then a prefectural capital, and Tohoku Imperial University, founded here in 1907, made it the intellectual centre of the north.

American bombing in July 1945 destroyed most of the centre. The rebuilt city was given unusually wide avenues, planted with zelkova and ginkgo, which grew into the green tunnels that gave Sendai its nickname. Post-war growth made it the administrative and commercial hub of Tohoku, and the Shinkansen reached it in 1982. On 11 March 2011 the earthquake off the coast sent a tsunami across the flat eastern edge of the city, killing hundreds of residents in Arahama and the farmland behind it; the centre, on higher ground, survived largely intact.

Sendai trades on the Date name. Masamune's silhouette, with its crescent-moon helmet crest and eyepatch, appears on souvenirs, manhole covers and festival posters, and his mausoleum, castle site and armour are the city's core sights. The spring Aoba festival revives the domain's processions along with suzume odori, the sparrow dance now performed by hundreds of teams.

The great public event is Tanabata in early August, the largest in Japan, when the arcades are hung with tall bamboo poles trailing streamers of hand-made paper. In September the Jozenji Streetjazz Festival turns pavements over to hundreds of bands, and in December hundreds of thousands of lights are strung through the trees of the same avenue. The rhythm of a student city runs underneath: Tohoku University and several others fill the bars of Kokubuncho and the cafés along the arcades.

Since 2011 remembrance has become part of local culture. Memorial ceremonies are held each March, the ruined Arahama school is kept as a teaching site, and disaster preparedness is taught in schools and rehearsed by employers. Sendai hosted the United Nations conference that produced the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in 2015. People here are often described by other Japanese as reserved and unhurried, and the city is proud of its trees, its rivers and the openness of streets that most Japanese cities lack.

About 1.1 million people live in Sendai, roughly an eighth of the population of Tohoku, and the city keeps growing slowly while the region around it shrinks. Young people arrive from all six prefectures for university and for work, and a good share then leave again for Tokyo, an hour and a half away by train.

The economy is administrative and commercial rather than industrial: national and prefectural offices, the regional headquarters of banks and companies, hospitals, broadcasters, and retail in the arcades and around the station. Universities and research institutes are significant employers, and the port and the airport handle the region's trade. Reconstruction work after 2011 sustained the construction industry for a decade.

Most residents live in flats near the subway lines or in houses on the hills to the west and south, and commuting is by subway, bus or bicycle rather than the long train journeys of Tokyo. Daily life is comfortable and comparatively spacious, with the Hirose River for walking and running, snow light enough to clear quickly, and easy weekend escapes to hot springs and the coast. The concerns are those of northern Japan: an ageing population in the surrounding towns, businesses struggling to hire, and the lasting social effects of the disaster along the shore.

Gyutan, grilled beef tongue, is the dish Sendai is known for across Japan. It was created in 1948 by a Sendai restaurateur, and is served salted and charcoal-grilled in thick slices with barley rice, pickles and a clear oxtail soup. Whole streets of specialists compete, above all on one floor of the station building.

The other signature is zunda, a bright green paste of boiled young soya beans, crushed with sugar and a little salt, spooned over mochi rice cakes or blended into milkshakes; it is the standard edible souvenir. Sasakamaboko, a steamed fish paste cake shaped like a bamboo leaf, is a Miyagi speciality eaten grilled and warm.

The sea supplies the rest. Miyagi is one of Japan's main oyster regions, and oysters from Matsushima Bay are eaten raw, grilled or in a miso hotpot from autumn to spring; tuna comes in from Shiogama, and Sanriku scallops, sea squirt and seaweed from the coast north of the city. Sendai miso, a dark, salty red miso brewed in the castle town since the Edo period, flavours soups and pickles, and the rice of the Sendai plain feeds a strong prefectural sake industry. In autumn the city eats harako meshi, salmon and roe on rice, and in summer beer gardens are set up along Jozenji-dori.