Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku [Hardcover]

Ian Reader (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2005

This study involves a fourteen-hundred-kilometer-long pilgrimage around Japan’s fourth largest island, Shikoku. In traveling the circuit of the eighty-eight Buddhist temples that make up the route, pilgrims make their journey together with Kôbô Daishi (774–835), the holy miracle-working figure who is at the heart of the pilgrimage.

Once seen as a marginal practice, recent media portrayal of the pilgrimage as a symbol of Japanese cultural heritage has greatly increased the number of participants, both Japanese and foreign. In this absorbing look at the nature of the pilgrimage, Ian Reader examines contemporary practices and beliefs in the context of historical development, taking into account theoretical considerations of pilgrimage as a mode of activity and revealing how pilgrimages such as Shikoku may change in nature over the centuries.

This rich ethnographic work covers a wide range of pilgrimage activity and behavior, drawing on accounts of pilgrims traveling by traditional means on foot as well as those taking advantage of the new package bus tours, and exploring the pilgrimage’s role in the everyday lives of participants and the people of Shikoku alike. It discusses the various ways in which the pilgrimage is made and the forces that have shaped it in the past and in the present, including history and legend, the island’s landscape and residents, the narratives and actions of the pilgrims and the priests who run the temples, regional authorities, and commercial tour operators and bus companies.

In studying the Shikoku pilgrimage from anthropological, historical, and sociological perspectives, Reader shows in vivid detail the ambivalence and complexity of pilgrimage as a phenomenon that is simultaneously local, national, and international and both marginal and integral to the lives of its participants. Critically astute yet highly accessible, Making Pilgrimages will be welcomed by those with an interest in anthropology, religious studies, and Japanese studies, and will be essential for anyone contemplating making the pilgrimage themselves.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ian Reader is professor of religious studies at Lancaster University, England. He is the author of numerous books and articles on aspects of Japanese social and religious life.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press (February 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824828763
• ISBN-13: 978-0824828769
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,389,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Long and Winding Road, June 3, 2006

By 

Crazy Fox (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Pilgrimages: Meaning And Practice in Shikoku (Paperback)

Well, years and years of hard work, research, and fieldwork have gone into the making of this excellent study, and it certainly shows. "Making Pilgrimages" is scholarly in the best sense of the term; it is meticulous, careful, critically astute and finely nuanced, containing serious theoretical implications for our understandings of Japanese religiosity and the practice of pilgrimages in general while at the same time grounded in the particularities of this specific pilgrimage route and obviously inspired by a long-time fascination with it--all of this has been framed into a clear, appealing narrative full of big ideas, little insights and wonderfully understated flashes of humor. And here as usual Ian Reader never misses the forest for the trees nor the trees for the forest, but gets the balance just right.

The book has a sort of tripartite structure overall. The first three chapters discuss in general terms the specifics of the 88 Temple Pilgrimage route: What are its basic elements and common characteristics? Who does it and why? How does the geography of Shikoku (the natural AND human environment) shape the pilgrimage? What are the legends surrounding it, and what are the multiple understandings of its significance? Questions like these are explored first. The middle two chapters take a historical approach, tracing the Shikoku pilgrimage's development from its shadowy origins until the present day. Lots and lots of cool, fascinating details here.

Finally the last three chapters are the most personal in tone, as Ian Reader shares with us the fruit of his many years of fieldwork, first as a walking pilgrim on the route and second as a pilgrim on a chartered bus tour. One really gets a concrete feel for the dynamics of these two most common methods of performing the pilgrimage here (others include taxi, bike, and even helicopter (!)). In the last chapter he takes on aspects of this subject most anthropologists of religion ignore, like the aftereffects of the pilgrimage experience on those who have finished it as well as the phenomenon of those who never finish--who in one way or another remain seriously engaged with the pilgrimage on a lifelong basis.

A nice feature of this book too are the many photographs, which gives one a vivid image of what the pilgrimage looks like. There are lots of helpful glossaries, indexes, and appendices in the back too, including a very helpful list of the 88 Temples, the kanji (Chinese characters) for their names, the main image of worship, and the sect to which the temple belongs--interestingly enough, the pilgrimage is dedicated to the great monk Kukai/Kobo Daishi, the founder of the Shingon sect, but the temples themselves are not necessarily limited to this one sect.

In general, I can recommend this fine book both to the scholar and the general reader, and both to those whose interest is focused on Japan and to those who are more concerned with understanding the earthwide human practice of religious pilgrimage as a whole. And for sure anyone who's into Japanese religion and Buddhism should absolutely not do without it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Traveling through a Mandala, February 4, 2010

By 

marc "henro" (Florida USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Making Pilgrimages: Meaning And Practice in Shikoku (Paperback)

I walked the Shikoku Henro Pilgrimage in 1989. It was the experience of a lifetime and Reader captures the history and experience of the Pilgrimage in very readable detail.

Reading this book brought back so many memories. Spectacular views of rice fields, sea coasts, mountain ridges. Long discussions with temple priests. Meeting kids and their grandparents who had never seen a 'gaijin' (foreigner)outside of TV or photos. The trucks zooming past me in long dark tunnels. Meeting other walkers along misty mountain paths. Waiting for an hour behind the tourist bus pilgrims to get my temple stamps. The overwhelming generosity of the people of Shikoku Island and others as they gave me gifts of tangerines, sweets and cups of tea, and more.

I met and spent time with several of the people he wrote about, and Reader captures them and their experiences along the Pilgrim trail and temples. Through this fine book I was able to link my experiences others across a thousand years of making the pilgrimage. Thank you Ian Reader, fellow Henro!

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book written on the Shikoku pilgrimage, February 27, 2011

By 

JAD (MILWAUKEE, WI, US) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Making Pilgrimages: Meaning And Practice in Shikoku (Paperback)

The most comprehensive and detailed work on the multiple meanings given to the Shikoku pilgrimage in Japan. Likely to become a foundational work for many other studies on this and similar pilgrimages throughout Japan.