Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku (review)

Ian Reader's long-awaited book is a masterful study of the Shikoku pilgrimage, the fourteen-hundred-kilometer circuit around the island of Shikoku to the eighty-eight temples associated with the miracle-working Shingon Buddhist ascetic Kōbō Daishi. The Shikoku henro, as it is called, is one of a number of pilgrimages that arose in the latter half of the Heian period and developed into a major form of popular religion. Like other traditional pilgrimages (e.g., the Saikoku Kannon route, Ise, Osorezan, Dewa Sanzan, and Mt. Fuji, to name only a few), it has also flourished in postwar Japan. This is largely because of the modern Japanese travel industry's role in developing package bus tours and mass-marketing that attract those who have the time and money for leisure travel (in the case of Shikoku, the majority of these are female and aged sixty or older). Some do the pilgrimage simply to "discover Japan," but others undertake it as a deeply personal spiritual quest. Reader estimates that in excess of one hundred thousand pilgrims participate annually in the Shikoku henro, making it one of the more important Japanese pilgrimages today.

Making Pilgrimages is the culmination of over two decades of research. It began with a series of important articles and book chapters that Reader published in the 1980s and 90s. These essays called attention not only to the spiritual richness of the Shikoku route, but also to the ubiquity and popularity of pilgrimage as a major current in contemporary Japanese religious life. It is fair to say that many Western scholars, myself included, are heavily indebted to his pioneering work.

While his focus is primarily on the present day and pilgrim-centered, Reader argues that studying the Shikoku pilgrimage simply by "observing it, and its participants, synchronically" is insufficient (p. 5). Nor is it adequate to focus exclusively on the sacred sites that are the pilgrim's goal. A proper study cannot simply draw boundaries around the field "in either disciplinary terms or in the context of one's fieldwork" since pilgrimage "encompasses" disparate historical, social, economic, and religious fields (pp. 34-35). The henro is linked, for example, not just to local Shikoku folk religious tradition but also to national and sectarian Buddhist traditions. A variety of dynamically changing factors likewise affect the nature of the pilgrimage. A case in point, the upsurge in pilgrims, mainly middle-aged men, that Reader observed in his April 2000 pilgrimage is directly related to the economic recession; most are victims of risutora ("restructuring"), unemployed "drop-out pilgrims" who are "estranged from society and keen to search out alternative modes of being" (p. 28). One cannot comprehend Shikoku's increasing popularity, moreover, without taking into account other wider cultural factors. For many, a major reason to take the pilgrimage is to escape modern society's pressures or to find an "antidote" to present-day Japan's empty materialism (p. 155). Shikoku's natural beauty, its ancient temples, and its marginality from urban centers, therefore, make it a key part of a cultural discourse of nostalgia; Shikoku is the idealized furusato (literally, one's native village) that contemporary pilgrims desire in their quest for identity and heritage (p. 50).

Reader aims to encompass the rich themes, symbolism, and practices of the henro by offering what Clifford Geertz called a "thick description." The book roughly divides into three parts. The first section offers a general overview of the Shikoku pilgrimage, a discussion of theoretical issues, and a description of the "emotional landscape." By this term Reader means not just the geographical setting of Shikoku, but the mythological imaginaire-the symbols, legends, and miracle tales that make the pilgrimage deeply meaningful and powerful for those who undertake it. The second section takes a diachronic approach, giving an extensive account of the pilgrimage's historical roots and development through the modern period. It is valuable not only as a concise historical overview, but because of its comprehensive survey of...