Aizu Sazaedo: Visiting Japan's Wooden Double-Helix Temple

Visitors climbing Sazaedo and visitors descending it never meet, even though they share the same tower.

Aizu Sazaedo is a small wooden pagoda built in 1796 on Iimoriyama hill in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture. From the outside it looks like a hexagonal three-story tower. Inside, it holds something no other historic building in the world appears to replicate: a true double-helix staircase, so that pilgrims going up and pilgrims going down trace separate spiral ramps and never pass each other. The structure is a nationally important cultural property and a long-standing candidate for the UNESCO Memory of the World architectural lists.

The architectural uniqueness

The temple's formal name is Entsu Sansoudou. Pilgrims originally entered from the top of the hill, walked up the ascending ramp while bowing to thirty-three Kannon statues set along the wall, reached the top of the tower, and then descended on the second helix, exiting at a different ground-level opening. The two spirals interlock without stairs crossing, a design that even today is rare in wood anywhere in the world. The engineering was the work of the monk Ikudo, and the whole tower is held together without nails in the main structural joints.

Access from Aizu-Wakamatsu Station

Aizu-Wakamatsu is reached from Tokyo via the Tohoku Shinkansen to Koriyama and then the JR Banetsu West Line, roughly three to three and a half hours in total. From Aizu-Wakamatsu Station, the easiest way to reach Sazaedo is the Haikara-san sightseeing loop bus, which stops at Iimoriyama in about fifteen minutes. A taxi costs around 1,500 to 2,000 yen one way. From the bus stop it is a short walk up the hill, with escalators available for a small fee as an alternative to the long stone staircase.

Entry and opening hours

• ●Entry fee — around 400 yen for adults, with reduced prices for students.
• ●Hours — generally 8:15 to sunset in the main season; shortened winter hours in December through March.
• ●Open all year — the temple does not close seasonally, though snow access can slow visits in January and February.
• ●Inside time — climbing and descending the double helix takes about ten minutes at a steady pace.

Combining with Byakkotai and Tsuruga-jo Castle

Iimoriyama is better known to most Japanese visitors as the hill where the Byakkotai, the teenage White Tiger unit of the Boshin War, took their lives in 1868 after mistakenly believing their lord's castle had fallen. Their graves and a small museum sit a few minutes from Sazaedo, and travelers typically combine the two sites in a single morning. The actual castle, Tsuruga-jo, stands reconstructed on the other side of the city and is reached in about fifteen minutes by the same Haikara-san loop bus. A full day of Iimoriyama, Sazaedo, and Tsuruga-jo is a comfortable pace.

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