The Shikoku Eighty-Eight Temple Pilgrimage

The equipment of the Shikoku pilgrim is not costume. Each item is a claim, and the claims are what the circuit is about.

The white robe

The hakui is white because white is the colour of death in Japan, and the garment is the one a corpse is dressed in. The henro puts it on to walk. The old circuit was dangerous (long, remote, poorly provisioned, walked by the sick, the outcast and the destitute as often as by the devout), and people died on it; there are pilgrim graves along the route. Wearing the burial robe is not a metaphor about dying to the old self. It is a practical statement that the walker is prepared to be buried in what they are wearing, and it was for a long time literally true.

The staff

The kongo-zue is not a walking aid that has been sanctified. It is Kobo Daishi. The rules follow from that, and they are strict:

• At the end of the day the staff is washed before the pilgrim washes.
• It is stood in the alcove of the room, not leant against a wall or laid on the floor.
• It is never used to tap or strike a bridge, because of the story that Kukai once spent a cold night sleeping under one, and the sound would disturb him.

Two travelling as one

Dogyo ninin is written on the hat and on the staff. It means the henro is never alone: Kukai walks the circuit alongside every pilgrim, continuously, and has been doing so since the ninth century. This is not remembered as history. It is asserted as a present fact, and the equipment is how it is asserted.

Osettai

Osettai is the gift (food, drink, money, a bed, a lift), pressed on pilgrims by people who live along the route. The rule is that it cannot be refused, and the reason is precise: the giver is not being kind to a stranger. The giver is making an offering to the Daishi, and the pilgrim is the channel. To refuse is to deny someone their merit, which is a harm, not a modesty.

This produces the odd economy the circuit runs on. Buses, stamp books, calligraphy, robes and prefectural marketing on one side; on the other, a parallel gift system that will not accept money and that the commercial side has never displaced. Both have been running side by side for decades and neither party seems to find it a contradiction.

And the number

Eighty-eight is not explained by any early source. The circuit's attribution to Kukai is traditional and unsupported: what is attested from the Heian and Kamakura periods is ascetic circumambulation of the island by monks, not a numbered list. The fixed set of eighty-eight temples in a settled order is a product of the 1680s, and specifically of print, of Shinnen's guidebook of 1687 and the route markers he had put up.

Which is to say: the practice is genuinely old, the form everybody now follows is early modern, and the founder credited with it had nothing to do with the version that exists. The white robe and the staff are the older thing.

The institution that makes the Shikoku circuit different from other long walks is settai: gifts given to henro by people living along the road. A mandarin, a coin, a can of coffee, a bed for the night, a lift over a pass. The convention is that settai is not refused, because the giver is not being kind to a stranger but acquiring a share in the pilgrimage. The henro is understood to be travelling with Kobo Daishi, so what is given to the henro is given to him, and the giver's merit follows the walker around the island. Refusing it takes something away from the person offering.

The walker's reciprocal obligation is small and precise: to hand over an osamefuda, the name slip otherwise left at each temple, so the giver has a record of the transaction.

The equipment carries the same logic. The white hakui is a burial garment, so the henro walks dressed for death. The kongo zue, the staff, is Kobo Daishi himself: it is washed before the walker washes, stood in the corner of the room rather than laid down, and never used to tap on a bridge, because the Daishi is said to have slept under one and the noise would disturb him. The phrase written on the hat, dogyo ninin, means two travelling together, and the second is not a companion.

The stamp book, the nokyocho, is filled at each of the eighty eight temples and is often placed in the owner's coffin.

Most henro now travel by bus or car, which the temples accept and the walking minority argue about, and the historical constituency of the road, which included the sick, the outcast and people with nowhere else to be, is not much discussed.