Shikoku Pilgrimage

To celebrate my wife's Kanreki year, we decided to spend 50 days walking the Shikoku Pilgrimage route around the island of Shikoku off the coast of Osaka, Japan.  This route, also know as Shikoku Henro, was established over 1200 years ago, covers 750 miles, and connects 88 Buddhist temples associated with the monk Kukai, aka Kobo Daishi .  The map below from henro.org shows the main route.

 

This map is a section of the route from the excellent 'The pilgrim's guide for the Shikoku pilgrimage - in English' book.

We will be mostly following the main route which is red dots, highlighted in pink on the map.  The other dotted paths are alternate routes that pass by additional temples, are more focused on historical aspects of Shikoku, or are more focused are natural areas of Shikoku. For more information on the pilgrimage check out the following sites:

• https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b03202/
• https://shikoku88-japan.com/en/pilgrimage/
• https://www.henro.org/shikoku-pilgrimage