Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku Paperback – December 31, 2004
by Ian Reader (Author)
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Making pilgrimages : meaning and practice in Shikoku
Reader, Ian, 1949-; 2006
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Details
Title
Making pilgrimages : meaning and practice in Shikoku
Author
Reader, Ian, 1949-
Publication Date
2006
Publisher
Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press
Subjects
Buddhist pilgrims and pilgrimages -- Japan -- Shikoku Region
Shikoku Region (Japan) -- Religious life and customs
Identifier(s)
ISBN : 9780824829070 (pbk.)
ISBN : 0824829077 (pbk.)
ISBN : 0824828763 (hbk.)
Physical description
xiv, 350 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.
Notes
Includes index.
Bibliography: p. 323-335.
Summary
"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 comprise the route, pilgrims make their journey together with Kobo 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 look at the nature of the pilgrimage, the author 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."--BOOK JACKET.
Language
English
Contents
1. Pilgrimage, practice, meanings : making pilgrimages in Shikoku -- 2. Making landscapes : geography, symbol, legend, and traces -- 3. Making pilgrimages : pilgrims, motives, and meanings -- 4. History, footsteps, and customs : making the premodern pilgrimage -- 5. Shaping the pilgrimage : from poverty to the package tour in postwar Japan -- 6. Walking pilgrimages : meaning and experience on the pilgrim's way -- 7. Making bus pilgrimages : practice and experience on the package tour -- 8. A way of life : pilgrimage, transformation, and permanence -- App. 1. The eighty-eight temples on the Shikoku pilgrimage (in numerical order) -- App. 2. Explanations for the number of temples on the Henro -- App. 3. Ways of doing the pilgrimage : average duration and costs.
Virtual Browse
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.
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Print length
368 pages
Language
English
Publisher
University of Hawaii Press
Publication date
December 31, 2004
Dimensions
6 x 0.82 x 9 inches
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Editorial Reviews
Review
More than 20 years in the making, Ian Reader’s book on the Shikoku pilgrimage is simply the best book in English on the subject. If you are planning on making the pilgrimage in Shikoku you will need one of the many guide books, but for background information this book is indispensable. . . . Like most of Reader’s other works, this book gives a solid insight into the meanings and practices of Japanese religion today. ― Japan Visitor
Masterful. . . . Reader has offered the field of Japanese religions an impressive piece of scholarly research, one that is not only informative, but frequently highly entertaining. ― Monumenta Nipponica
Both a deeply personal appreciation of the experience and a very detailed description of the Japanese practice and its historical background, together with reflection on the comparative notions of pilgrimage and analysis of the theoretical implications. ― Journal of Japanese Studies
Reader’s study contributes not only to Japanese area studies and the study of Japanese religion, but also to the broader field of pilgrimage studies and anthropology. . . . [It is] well rounded and entirely successful. Reader’s vivid prose makes this study a pleasure to read. ― Religious Studies Review
Well-researched . . . more data-rich and scholarly than Oliver Statler’s Japanese Pilgrimage ― Choice
About the Author
Ian Reader is professor of religious studies at Lancaster University.He is the author of numerous books and articles on aspects of Japanese social and religious life.
Product details
ASIN : 0824829077
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press; Annotated edition (December 31, 2004)
Language : English
Paperback : 368 pages
ISBN-10 : 9780824829070
ISBN-13 : 978-0824829070
Item Weight : 1.31 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 0.82 x 9 inchesBest Sellers Rank: #2,117,930 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)#1,500 in Buddhist Rituals & Practice (Books)
#2,770 in Japanese History (Books)
#3,363 in General AnthropologyCustomer Reviews:
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 12 ratings
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Top reviews from the United States
AlchemistGeorge
VINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive view of the Shikoku PilgrimageReviewed in the United States on August 4, 2012
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This is the fourth book I've read about the pilgrimage: Statler's Japanese Pilgrimage, The 1918 Shikoku Pilgrimage of Takamure Itsue, and Lisa Dempster's Neon Pilgrim. This is easily the most comprehensive.
The book presents many points of view. How do the residents of Shikoku view the pilgrimage (and pilgrims)? How do the temple priests view the bus and walking pilgrims ? The tour companies and tour guides? The bus pilgrims? The walkers? And how does the pilgrimage today fit into the history of Shikoku, and Japanese pilgrimages, and pilgrimages in general? Maybe its a slight exaggeration, but I would say "its all here." It gives you a pretty concrete sense of what it is like to either walk the route, or take the bus. Almost everything - except its not a guide book.
This is obviously a book written by an academic, a lot of thoroughly reasoned statements carefully qualified, footnotes, obviously a lot of primary and secondary research. Yet easy to read, fun to read, and informative. One of the appendices even gives estimated costs for doing the pilgimage!
Strongly recommended for people looking for anything more than a first person account of doing the pilgrimage.
9 people found this helpful
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marc
5.0 out of 5 stars Traveling through a MandalaReviewed in the United States on February 4, 2010
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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!
6 people found this helpful
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Chandra
4.0 out of 5 stars Shikoku PilgrimageReviewed in the United States on April 1, 2012
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I have started reading the book and have only just completed the first chapter. From what I can judge so far, it is a very detailed study of the Shikoku pilgrimage, its historical evoulution and its significance from religious and cultural aspects. The text is very well written and I have found the narration very interesting even though this book or its subject would not arouse much enthusiam among many if judged only by its title. The authour is commended for the quality of his presentation. The book will be extremely very useful to me and my wife who intend to embark on this pilgrimage as soon as we have sufficient funds.
The condition of the used book I purched was good and I am happy with it.
Thanks
Chandra
2 people found this helpful
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Rich Dudley
4.0 out of 5 stars I was looking for a better understanding of the overall hikeReviewed in the United States on October 14, 2015
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This book is a research discussion about those who have traveled (by foot and by bus) the Shikoku Pilgrimage. It was researched over several trips to Shikoku and "interviewing" hundreds of foot and bus travelers. It covers the motives for doing and meaning of the pilgrimage for many travelers. I was looking for a better understanding of the overall hike; it's planning and execution. The book did not cover or address these topics. Nonetheless, it was an interesting read, but far more research oriented than I expected. As a research paper, I think it is very well done.
One person found this helpful
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JAD
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book written on the Shikoku pilgrimageReviewed in the United States on February 27, 2011
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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.
2 people found this helpful
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Carole Jerome
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on January 7, 2015
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Beautiful book; exceptional retail experience
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Crazy Fox
5.0 out of 5 stars The Long and Winding RoadReviewed in the United States on June 4, 2006
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.
21 people found this helpful
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John Maurice
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, thank you !Reviewed in Canada on October 26, 2018
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excellent, thank you !
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