Zuihōden

The mausoleum of Date Masamune, the one-eyed daimyō who founded Sendai in 1601, sitting in cedar forest on a hilltop above the Hirose River. The current Zuihōden is a 1979 reconstruction of the 1637 original (which burned in 1945), but the rebuild used the original Momoyama-era polychrome painting techniques on the eaves and ceiling, and the cedar grove approach is the unchanged five-hundred-year-old path. Two smaller mausoleums on the same grounds hold Masamune's son and grandson. The walk up the stone steps takes about ten minutes; momiji season turns the whole approach scarlet in mid-November.