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Shikoku Pilgrimage
Michael Thaler
© 2008 Michael Thaler
What's so special about Shikoku?
Isolation is what makes Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, such a special place for me. Shikoku is doubly isolated. Geographically, it wasn’t until fairly recently that bridges connected it to Honshu, Japan’s main island. Before then, travel back and forth was by boat. Despite today’s easier access, it’s still well off the tourist trail. Even Japanese goelsewhere for their vacations.More significantly to me, Shikoku is chronologically isolated -- that is, it’s caught in a timewarp in which traditional ways of doing things are still to be found in greater abundance thanelsewhere in Japan.The island is divided into four prefectures, analogous to states in the United States (Shi = four,koku = provinces). The pace of life there, even in the cities, is less rushed. The island as awhole, and the rural areas in particular, are less affluent than elsewhere in Japan because mostmajor industries and big corporations are based in the Tokyo and Osaka areas. I think it is thisexistence outside the frenetic mainstream that has allowed Shikoku to retain so many of theold ways, especially in its rural areas.One of these old ways is the Shikoku 88-temple pilgrimage, the longest and most famousBuddhist pilgrimage in Japan. The route supposedly was laid out and the temples chosen bythe monk Kukai, known more popularly by his posthumous title, Kobo Daishi, or GreatTeacher of the Buddhist Law. Kukai (774-835) traveled to China during a period of intensestudy by the Japanese of the best that China had to offer in terms of Buddhism, philosophy,government theory, and the arts.
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