Sacred trails

Ten pilgrimages with nothing in common but the walking

There is no such thing as «the Japanese pilgrimage»: there are separate traditions walking for incompatible reasons, and this route lines them up so you can tell. On the Dewa Sanzan, shugendo climbs three mountains that stand for the past life, this one and the next, and you sleep at the summit with the yamabushi; at Osorezan the pilgrim comes to speak with the dead through a blind medium. At Koyasan, Shingon Buddhism looks after a master its school says never died, and still brings him two meals a day. The Kumano Kodo is a road, not a destination, and there the buddhas and the kami were the same thing. Ise is torn down and rebuilt in full every twenty years; Izumo has stood since before there was anything to date it by. At Naruto begins a circuit of 88 temples walked in the company of a monk twelve hundred years dead. And in Nagasaki the pilgrimage was staying Christian for two hundred and fifty years with no priest, no church and no book.

The itinerary, stop by stop

1. Osore-zan2 days

   One of Japan's three holiest mountains alongside Koyasan and Hieizan, traditionally regarded as the gateway to the afterlife: a barren, sulphurous volcanic landscape around Bodaiji temple, with the turquoise waters of Lake Usori, and home to the itako mediums who are said to speak with the dead during the festival in late July.

   The route starts where going on pilgrimage means going to speak to a dead person. Osorezan is one of Japan's three holiest mountains, with Koyasan and Hieizan, and tradition holds it to be the gateway to the afterlife: a crater of sulphur and barren stone around Bodaiji temple, with turquoise Lake Usori behind it because the water is too acidic to hold life. The landscape is not a metaphor someone laid on top; it is simply what is there, and it is why the site was chosen.

   What October brings is the Aki Mairi, the autumn pilgrimage, three days in the middle of the month. And what really sets this mountain apart are the itako, blind mediums who are said to speak with the voices of the dead for whoever sits down in front of them. This is not folklore laid on for visitors: people come for exactly this, queue, and weep. Worth knowing before you arrive, because it is a working cemetery rather than a monument.

   Two days, sleeping in Bodaiji's own shukubo, which is how the mountain has always been visited: it is an hour and a half from central Aomori with nothing around it. The stone cairns people pile up for dead children, and the old pilgrim path, are walked slowly. Then it is three hundred kilometres down to Yamagata, which is the other end of the same idea: instead of speaking to the dead, dying yourself and coming back.

   What puts it in this route: Bodaiji Temple · Volcanic landscape and stone cairns · Aki Mairi, the autumn pilgrimage · Old pilgrims' path (Osorezan Kodo)

2. Dewa Sanzan3 days

   The three sacred mountains of Shugendo, where pilgrimage is not folklore: 2,446 stone steps through four-hundred-year-old cedars to a 14th-century pagoda, a night in a yamabushi family's lodge and food made from whatever the mountain gives. Haguro can be climbed year-round; Gassan and Yudono open only in summer.

   Shugendo does not climb one mountain: it climbs three, and each is a life. Haguro is this one, Gassan the past one and Yudono the one to come, and walking them in that order is a symbolic rebirth the yamabushi have been performing for a thousand years. Haguro is climbed by 2,446 stone steps between four-century-old cedars, with a fourteenth-century pagoda halfway up, and at the top stands the Sanjin Gosaiden, which gathers all three mountains under a thatched roof over two metres thick.

   In October Gassan is already closed — it opens only July to September — and that changes the route without breaking it: Yudono-san stays open into November, and it is the part nothing can be said about. At Yudono you are forbidden to describe what you see; pilgrims take off their shoes and keep quiet. The Rokujurigoe Kaido, the old road between the Shonai plain and the interior, can be walked in sections.

   Three days, one of them sleeping at the Saikan on the Haguro summit or in the shukubo village of Toge, with shojin cooking and prayers before dawn. One more thing, and it is the hardest to place: Churen-ji and Dainichibo keep mummified monks who mummified themselves while alive, eating bark and seeds for years until the body could no longer rot. They are on display, dressed, and people pray to them.

   What puts it in this route: The 2,446 stone steps of Mount Haguro · A night at Saikan, on the Haguro summit · Yudonosan Shrine · The mummified monks of Churenji and Dainichibo · An introduction to yamabushi training · The Rokujurigoe Kaido pilgrim road

3. Nagano-Togakushi2 days

   Zenko-ji Temple, one of Japan's most venerated, at the heart of the city; in the nearby mountains, Togakushi's five shrines linked by a forest trail, ending in a 400-year-old cedar avenue leading to Okusha Shrine.

   Zenko-ji predates the schools. It was founded before Japanese Buddhism split into sects, so it belongs to none of them and admits everyone, women included, at a time when most sacred mountains barred them. That made it, for centuries, the pilgrimage of ordinary people: going to Zenko-ji once in your life was within anyone's reach, and the city of Nagano grew up around it.

   Inside you do the Okaidan-meguri: down into a passage beneath the main altar, in absolute darkness, feeling along the wall for a lock that gives symbolic access to paradise. There is nothing to see and that is the point. The other appointment is before dawn: the morning blessing, in which the abbot blesses those kneeling in the street before the first service.

   The second day climbs to Togakushi and its five shrines, linked by a forest path. The last stretch up to the Okusha is an avenue of four-hundred-year-old cedars, and it is the only place on this route where pilgrimage looks like a walk: Mount Togakushi is, in the myth, the rock torn from the cave where the sun goddess hid. Two days, sleeping in one of the temple's own lodgings.

   What puts it in this route: Zenko-ji Temple · Togakushi's Okusha Shrine and the cedar avenue · Okaidan-meguri, the dark passage under Zenko-ji · Zenko-ji, the temple older than the schools

4. Hakusan2 days

   The third of Japan's three sacred mountains, alongside Fuji and Tateyama, and the one people climb by sleeping at 2,450 m so they can stand on the summit at sunrise. Below it lies a valley of snow-country villages, pressed tofu and hot springs that still works on the day you don't go up.

   Hakusan is the third of Japan's three sacred mountains, with Fuji and Tateyama, and the only one of the three climbed in full on this route. The practical difference is that it is not a day trip: you sleep at 2,450 metres to be on the Gozengaho summit, at 2,702, at sunrise, which is when the Okumiya of Shirayama Hime makes sense. That summit shrine opens July to October, so this is the last month for it.

   Down in the valley stands Shirayama Hime-jinja, the head shrine of more than two thousand Hakusan shrines across Japan, and from it runs the Kaga Zenjodo, the old pilgrim road people climbed by before there was a road. You can walk the whole thing or just the upper section; the difference is a day and a good deal of ascent.

   And there is a hard date worth knowing even though it does not affect October: the destination closes completely from December to April. It is not that there is less to see, it is that you cannot get in. Two days, and below there is a valley of snow villages, pressed tofu and hot springs that still works on a day when the summit is not attempted.

   What puts it in this route: Gozengaho summit (2,702 m) at sunrise · Shirayama Hime's summit shrine · The old pilgrims' path, the Kaga Zenjodo · Shirayama Hime-jinja, the head shrine

5. Ise-Shima2 days

   The holiest shrine in Shinto is pulled down and rebuilt whole on the plot next door every twenty years, with every sacred treasure remade by hand; the preparatory rites, such as the hauling of the timber, are already being held and can be watched. You begin at the outer shrine and finish at the inner one, purifying yourself in the Isuzu river. On the coast the ama still dive, and Ago bay is sown with pearl rafts.

   Ise is the most useful contradiction on this route: the most important shrine in Shinto is also the newest. Every twenty years it is pulled down entirely and rebuilt from scratch on the plot next door, with new timber and the same techniques, and the sacred objects are moved across. What you visit is always less than two decades old and has at the same time been done this way for thirteen hundred years. The permanence is not in the building, it is in the act of remaking it.

   There is a protocol and it is worth knowing in advance: the Geku, the outer shrine, first, then the Naiku; and on the correct side of the path for each, because the middle is reserved for the deity. No photographs past a certain point. What you see of the main compound is a fence and a roof: there is nothing to look at, and that, again, is the point. The Okage Mairi was the mass pilgrimage of the Edo period, when whole villages slipped away to Ise without permission.

   Two days, with Kongosho-ji on Mount Asama and, for anyone who wants to connect with what comes next, the start of the Kumano Kodo Ise-ji over the Magose and Tsuzurato passes, stone-paved through forest. From here it is a little over a hundred kilometres to Koyasan, and a complete change of religion.

   What puts it in this route: Grand Shrine of Ise (Naiku) · Outer Shrine of Ise (Geku) · The shrine rebuilt every 20 years · Okage Mairi and the protocol of the visit · Kumano Kodo Ise-ji: Magose and Tsuzurato passes

6. Kōya-san2 days

   A monastery town on a mountain, the headquarters of Shingon Buddhism since the year 819, with the vast Okunoin cemetery among centuries-old cedars and the chance to stay overnight in a temple (shukubo) with morning prayers and vegetarian Buddhist food.

   For Shingon Buddhism, Kukai did not die: he entered eternal meditation in 835 and is still there, at the far end of the Okunoin cemetery, two kilometres of cedars and two hundred thousand graves away. This is not a turn of phrase. Twice a day, every day for nearly twelve hundred years, monks carry his meal in procession and take it into the mausoleum. That is the Koyasan pilgrimage: visiting someone who, according to the house, is alive.

   Okunoin by day and by night are two different places, and the guided night walk with a monk is the one that explains the graves: feudal lords buried beside their enemies, company monuments to their employees, a memorial to the termites killed by a pest-control firm. At dawn there is the goma, the fire ritual, where wooden tablets with written petitions are burned while the monk chants.

   Two days, sleeping in a shukubo, which here is not a curiosity but the normal way to stay: more than fifty temples have rooms, a shojin dinner and early-morning prayers you are welcome to attend. Anyone with a spare day climbs the Choishi-michi, the original twenty-kilometre path with its stone markers every hundred and nine metres, or skirts the mountain on the Nyonindo, the trail women had to use when they were not allowed in.

   What puts it in this route: Okunoin Cemetery · A night in a temple (shukubo) · Goma fire ritual at dawn · Choishi-michi, the original climbing route · Nyonindo and the women's trail · Kechien Kanjo initiation ceremony

7. Kumano (Tanabe)3 days

   Tanabe is where you start walking the Kumano Kodo, the network of pilgrimage trails crossing the forested mountains of the Kii peninsula and twinned with the Camino de Santiago: anyone who has walked sections of both registers here as a Dual Pilgrim. Along the way is Yunomine, one of the oldest hot springs in Japan, with a wooden hut for two set in the stream whose water changes colour several times a day.

   The Kumano Kodo is the opposite of everything before it: not a place but a road, and what is venerated is the walking. For centuries retired emperors and peasants used the same paving, heading for three shrines — Hongu, Nachi and Hayatama — where buddhas and kami were not two things coexisting but one thing with two names. It is the only pilgrimage in the world twinned with the Camino de Santiago, and there is a dual pilgrim credential for anyone who walks both.

   Three days is enough for a real section rather than a photograph. The Daimonzaka climbs a stone stairway between huge trees to Seiganto-ji and the Nachi waterfall, which is itself the shrine's deity. The Ogumotori-goe is the hard stretch, the one old diaries describe as the pilgrim-killer. And at Hongu there is Oyunohara, where the shrine stood until a flood took it, marked today by the largest torii in the world.

   You sleep at Yunomine, a hot-spring village wedged into a ravine, and there is the Tsuboyu: a wooden hut over a pool for two people, in half-hour turns, the only bath in the world where bathing is part of a World Heritage route. Pilgrims purified themselves there before reaching Hongu, and it is still done exactly the same way.

   What puts it in this route: Kumano Kodo hiking section · Kumano Hongu Grand Shrine · Nachi Grand Shrine and Waterfall · Yunomine Onsen · Tsuboyu, the World Heritage bath · Ogumotori-goe, the hardest stretch of the Kodo · Dual Pilgrim credential with the Camino de Santiago · Fudarakusan-ji and the boats without oars

8. Kotohira1 day

   Pilgrimage town centred on Kotohira-gu Shrine (Kompira-san): 785 steps to the main shrine and 1,368 to the inner Okusha shrine.

   Day trip to Naruto

   Kotohira is the only place on the route where the pilgrimage was not made by the person praying. Kompira is the sailors' shrine, and for centuries those who could not come set a small barrel adrift with an offering and the shrine's name on it: whoever found it was obliged to carry it here. The Ema-do hall is full of ship votives, from woodblock prints to photographs of oil tankers, left by crews who made it back.

   It is 785 steps to the main shrine, at 251 metres, and another 583 to the Okusha for anyone going on. The palanquin service was discontinued in 2020 as the bearers aged and no longer exists, so you walk up or you do not go up. October brings the Reitaisai and the O-Tonin procession, the shrine's great festival.

   The side trip goes to Naruto, and it closes a thread that has been open all route: Ryozen-ji is temple number 1 of Shikoku's 88, the circuit walked in the company of Kukai — the same one from Koyasan — which is why pilgrims carry two names on their hat, their own and the monk's. You can walk the first stretch to temple 2 and come back. And on the way lies Zentsu-ji, temple 75, where Kukai was born.

   What puts it in this route: Climb to Kompira-san · Reitaisai and the O-Tonin procession · Zentsu-ji, temple 75 · Climbing to the shrine at dawn · Ryozenji, temple number 1 of the 88 · Walking the first stretch of the 88-temple trail

9. Matsue-Izumo2 days

   Matsue Castle, one of only twelve in Japan with its original keep, overlooks a canal-lined old town by Lake Shinji, famous for its sunsets; 30 minutes away sits Izumo Taisha, one of the country's oldest Shinto shrines.

   If Ise is the shrine that gets remade, Izumo is the one that has stood since before there was anything to date it by. Japan's oldest chronicles already treat it as ancient, and some hold that the original building stood nearly fifty metres high. Prayer here is different: four claps instead of two, because the god of Izumo is the god of bonds and you greet him twice over, for yourself and for whoever is going to turn up.

   In the tenth lunar month every god in Japan leaves their shrine and gathers here. The rest of the country calls that month Kannazuki, the month without gods; Izumo calls it Kamiarizuki, the month with gods. They arrive at Inasa beach and are seen off at Mankusen. In 2026 that falls in November, so this route passes just before: you see the place made ready and not the ceremony, which is a real loss and worth saying.

   Two days, and there is plenty around it: Ichibata Yakushi and its pilgrim staircase, Gakuenji with its autumn colour at its best in October, vermilion Hinomisaki out on the cape, and the Izumo no Kuni Shinbutsu Reijo circuit, which strings shrines and temples together on one route without anyone finding it odd. This is the part of Japan where the syncretism never fully came apart.

   What puts it in this route: Izumo Taisha Shrine · Inasa Beach and the Bentenjima rock · Mankusen Jinja, the farewell to the gods · Ichibata Yakushi and its pilgrims' stairway · Izumo no Kuni Shinbutsu Reijo circuit

10. Nagasaki2 days

    The port Portugal, the Netherlands and China came in through, and it shows everywhere: Oura is the oldest standing Christian church in Japan, shippoku is a round-table banquet fusing Japanese, Chinese and European cooking, and castella is a Portuguese sponge cake rebuilt with rice molasses. The Peace Park and the atomic bomb museum are places of active mourning, not attractions. Offshore lies the mine-island of Gunkanjima.

    The route ends with the pilgrimage that consisted of not moving. When Christianity was banned, the communities of Nagasaki and the Sotome coast went on being Christian for two hundred and fifty years with no priest, no church and no book, passing the prayers down from memory until the Latin deformed into something that was no longer Latin, and disguising the Virgin as Kannon so they could keep her at home.

    At Oura cathedral, in 1865, a group of peasants approached a newly arrived French priest and asked him quietly about the statue of Mary. That was the moment Europe learned they still existed. It is the oldest church still standing in Japan, and the only monument in the country built before anyone knew there was someone to dedicate it to.

    Two days, with the Sotome coast and the villages of Shitsu and Ono, where those people lived and where Shusaku Endo set 'Silence'; his literary museum is right there, facing the sea. And the monument to the 26 martyrs, crucified on a hill in the city in 1597, with which the whole story begins. Then there is Urakami cathedral, which the 1945 bomb blew apart five hundred metres away and which was rebuilt with the old stones set into it.

    What puts it in this route: Oura Cathedral · The Sotome coast · The villages of Shitsu and Ono, in Sotome · Monument and museum of the 26 Martyrs · Shusaku Endo Literary Museum