Irohazaka are a pair of winding roads connecting the lower elevation around central Nikko, in the mountains of Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, to the higher elevations of Oku-Nikko located in the northwestern part of Nikko. "i-ro-ha" are the first three characters of the 48 syllables of the formerly used Japanese alphabet (which is now known as "aiueo"), and "zaka" means "slope". The Irohazaka Winding Roads were so named because together they consist of 48 hairpin turns. Each turn is labeled with one of the 48 characters in the Japanese alphabet. Although the narrow road has been modernized over the years, care has been taken to keep the number of curves constant.

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