Pilgrims Until We Die

The Shikoku pilgrimage is a 750-mile circular route on the island of Shikoku, Japan, that encompasses eighty-eight Buddhist temples associated with the life of Japanese priest Kūkai (774-835 CE). Much has been written about this pilgrimage (called the henro in Japanese), including several pieces by the authors of Pilgrims Until We Die: Unending Pilgrimage in Shikoku, Ian Reader and John Shultz. Readers interested in learning more about the pilgrimage would do well to check these materials—especially Reader’s book, Making Pilgrimages (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004).

Reader and Shultz build on decades of experience studying the Shikoku pilgrimage—experience  that shines throughout the book. For this study, they took a multi-pronged approach. They conducted interviews from 2018-2019, sent inquiries through Henro (the pilgrimage’s magazine), contacted people over the internet, sent out questionnaires, and examined material culture, especially brocade fuda (like a pilgrim’s calling card) left at temples by people who had done the route more than 100 times.

The authors make two contributions to the field of pilgrimage studies. First, while the field has aimed to understand and create theories based on universal elements common to pilgrimages across the world, localized data have illustrated the difficulties of making overarching theorical claims. Reader and Shultz resist making grand theories in this book, and instead argue that localized practices like the Shikoku henro can “raise questions about the general nature of pilgrimage,” challenge assumptions about pilgrimage, and make “suggestions about how the [localized] example . . . can spur new thoughts and research about, and understandings of pilgrimage” (17).

Their second contribution is to argue against the idea that pilgrimage is “an exceptional practice done predominantly by people taking breaks from normal routines” (16). In other words, while much scholarship has focused on pilgrims’ journeys as singular moments within their lives, not much has examined how pilgrims engage with routes throughout their lifetimes. While Reader and Shultz examine a very particular form of engagement—repeat performances of the pilgrimage—they also argue that the pilgrimage provides a sense of identity and an organizing force in pilgrims’ lives, both on and off the route. Because of the pilgrimage’s circular nature and its legends, they argue that “the notion of unending pilgrimage is the dominant trope for the henro,” but repeat performances are “an under-appreciated dynamic event in global pilgrimage more broadly” (17), which are worth studying because repeaters can have an outsized influence on pilgrimages through their writings and activities.

In the introduction, the authors lay out their theoretical goals and methods of study. Chapter 1 is a general history and overview of the henro, especially useful if a reader is unfamiliar with the pilgrimage. Chapter 2, which is the longest of the book, highlights how modern developments such as transportation, car ownership, retirement pensions, and social media have “spurred a culture of multiple performance” (21). Chapter 3 looks at mendicant pilgrims who live permanently on the route, subsisting on alms. Chapter 4 shares the results of surveys of 20 pilgrims who had done the route large numbers of times. Here they address issues of “addiction” to the pilgrimage (Shikokubyō, literally “Shikoku illness”), highlighting how for some, Shikoku pilgrimage is seen as a relatively healthy alternative to other forms of addiction.

In chapter 5, Reader and Shultz discuss car pilgrims and discuss some surprising results: pilgrimage by car has become the dominant way of traveling the route since the 2010s, women are prominent members of the car pilgrim community, and couples and confraternities travel the route in personal vehicles. In chapter 6, they look at walkers who have a variety of motivations, including health, fitness, and self-exploration. Their conclusion draws these elements together while highlighting their contribution and hopes that scholarship examines “repetition, long-term, temporally unbound, and unending pilgrimage engagement” (230) because some pilgrims view “life as a pilgrimage and pilgrimage as a life journey” (233) limited only by death or inability to travel.

Reader and Shultz’s detailed examination of surveys and discussion of modern changes in the pilgrimage in chapter 2 is a major component of the book. Where Pilgrims Until We Die came to life for me, however, was in the second half, which utilizes interviews and narratives. These sections put names, faces, and stories to the statistics and datapoints in the first half, showing how and why people engage with the pilgrimage. In these narrative sections, we meet the pious mendicant pilgrims Hara, Shimada, and Koyoshi, who are constantly encircling the route, sleeping out, and surviving on alms or pensions. At the same time, we meet Kōgetsu, a charismatic poet-pilgrim who was captured by the police for an attempted murder that occurred many years prior. We meet Fukuda, who did around forty circuits per year, completing more than 648 around Shikoku (mainly by car) by his death. We meet an unnamed retired couple who have done the pilgrimage at least 60 times, and who spend most of their time traveling (because they fight less while on the road than at home) and sleeping in their converted van. I will remember their stories long after the rest of the book fades from my memory.

Pilgrims Until We Die is useful for multiple audiences. For scholars of pilgrimage studies, the call to examine lifelong engagement with a pilgrimage is well worth heeding; these points are most clearly articulated in the introduction, chapter 2, and conclusion. For scholars of Japanese religions, this work can provide an understanding of current trends in Japanese pilgrimage in general and the Shikoku henro in particular. It also provides a useful insight into the practices of aging Japanese (many of the repeaters are around or above retirement age), which is important in Japan’s rapidly aging society. This work makes contributions to all these fields of study by aptly bringing to the fore the lives and important roles held by repeat performers of the Shikoku henro and demonstrates how we are remiss if we fail to take them into account.

Matthew Mitchell is visiting assistant professor of religion at High Point University.

Matthew Mitchell

Date Of Review:

April 17, 2024