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.

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!

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.

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