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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 15, 2008
Review of Making Pilgrimages, Meaning and Practice in Shikoku
Making Pilgrimages, Meaning and Practice in Shikoku. By Ian Reader. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006, xv + 250 pages, ISBN 0-8248-2907-7, US $29.00.
Reviewed by Ronald S. Green
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Coastal Carolina University rgreen@coastal.edu
With this work, Ian Reader offers a unique and valuable contribution to the academic study of the Shikoku hachijūhakkasho, a pilgrimage to eighty-eight sacred places of Shikoku in honor of the Japanese Buddhist saint Kōbō Daishi (774-835). He does so by incorporating two decades of his own participant observations and in-depth interviews, along with an impressive array of resources, sociological, historical and personal narratives, both past and present.
