Kokubuncho, Sendai — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Kokubuncho?

Sendai City Hall stands in the third chome. The citizens' plaza in front of it and the Jozenji-dori beside it are where the events that represent the city take place. Two of them draw the crowds.

The Sendai Pageant of Starlight lights the street in winter, and the Jozenji Street Jazz Festival fills it in autumn. The old boundary markers are streets. Basho-no-tsuji closed the district at the south and the Omote-koji at the north in the Edo period, and the modern chome cover much the same ground from north to south, though the address reform of 1970 widened them east and west.

What is the history of Kokubuncho?

Kokubuncho was a merchant town under Sendai Castle. It ran along the Oshu Kaido as a long narrow strip from Basho-no-tsuji in the south to the Omote-koji in the north, and it competed with Omachi to be the commercial centre of the castle town. The reading has changed.

Edo-period Sendai said Kokubunmachi, and locally it came out as koppunmachi or kopponmachi, where the modern reading is Kokubuncho. Offices took over after the Meiji restoration. The district became part of the central business district, and after the years of high growth the second chome turned into the largest entertainment quarter in the Tohoku region.

The chome themselves date from 1970. That year's address reform widened the district east and west and divided it into the three chome it has now.

Where is Kokubuncho?

Kokubuncho lies in Aoba ward at the centre of Sendai, running north to south along Kokubuncho-dori, with the first chome south of Hirose-dori, the second between Hirose-dori and Jozenji-dori and the third north of Jozenji-dori.