S P O T ／ SPOT-280

Aizu Sazaedo (former Shosoji Sansodo)

会津さざえ堂（旧正宗寺三匝堂）あいづさざえどう

On the slopes of Mount Iimori in Aizuwakamatsu stands a building that looks as though it is mid-collapse, or mid-spin — a hexagonal wooden tower of three tiers, about 16.5 meters tall, its timberwork twisting upward like a conch shell. Built in 1796 and formally named Entsu Sansodo, it is universally known as Sazaedo, the "turban-shell hall," and its strangeness is not skin-deep. Inside is one of the rarest architectural feats in Japan: a double-helix ramp on which visitors going up and visitors coming down travel entirely separate spiral paths and never once meet. A worshipper enters, walks a continuous slope clockwise to the top, then descends a different slope without ever retracing a step or passing another pilgrim. The design had a devotional purpose — thirty-three Kannon images once lined the spiral, so that a single circuit counted as completing the entire Saigoku thirty-three-Kannon pilgrimage. Conceived by the priest Ikudo, this corkscrew of a building is a pre-modern wooden anticipation of the double-helix, and it was designated a National Important Cultural Property in 1995. Mount Iimori is also remembered as the place where the young Byakkotai warriors took their lives, lending the spiral hall a quiet weight beyond its architectural oddity.