S P O T ／ SPOT-313

Oishigami Pyramid

大石神ピラミッドおおいしがみぴらみっど

Deep in the mountains of Shingo Village in Aomori sits a cluster of large boulders that one strand of early-20th-century Japan decided was a pyramid older than the Egyptian ones. The centerpiece is a megalith roughly 12 meters around, surrounded by stones earnestly named the 'direction stone,' 'sun stone,' 'constellation stone,' and 'mirror stone.' The story dates to 1934, when an Aomori-born painter, Toriya Hatayama, insisted his homeland had a pyramid too and brought in Sakai Katsutoki — a man busy designating mountains all over Japan as ancient pyramids — who duly certified Mt. Oishigami as Japan's second 'pyramid.' The whole thing is woven from the Takenouchi Documents, a body of pseudo-ancient texts claiming Japan holds seven primordial sun-worship pyramids predating Egypt; the boulders, it's said, point exactly to the compass directions and bear carved ancient script and star maps. There is, of course, no archaeological or geological basis — these are natural rocks — but that misses the point. Together with the village's other famous oddity, the 'Tomb of Christ' just down the road, Oishigami is a perfectly preserved fossil of prewar occult nationalism fused with rural tourism: ancient sacred-rock instinct meets 1930s pyramid mania, marked today by a tidy vermilion torii gate and an explanatory signboard.