The unexpected highlight of a Japanese pilgrimage walk

Chatting away with a stranger as we sat starkers in a piping-hot onsen was not how I expected my night in a shukubo (Japanese temple lodging) to begin.

The first surprise was the onsen. While common in Japanese hotels, I didn’t expect to find one in a Buddhist monastery (much less the vintage cigarette dispenser in the hallway). After a long day walking the Shikoku Henro, a 746-mile (1200 kilometers) Buddhist pilgrimage route that links 88 temples and encircles the mountainous island of Shikoku, I couldn’t strip off fast enough.

About 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the start of the Shikoku Henro, which follows the first-century footsteps of legendary Japanese Buddhist priest Kūkai, also known as Kōbō Daishi, the Anrakuji Temple (Temple 6) is among a handful of temples you can stay in along this ancient trail. And if the packed dining room at dinner time was anything to go by, it’s very popular.

As I watched fellow guests throw themselves into the after-dinner chanting session in the temple’s main hall, I felt a little out of place as possibly the least religious person in the room. But you don’t need to be religious to embrace spiritual tourism, says Dr. Jaeyeon Choe, a lecturer in Tourism and Events at Glasgow Caledonian University who has a research interest in spiritual tourism. “Spiritual travel is becoming more popular as an alternative way for people to address mental health issues,” she says. According to research published in the Journal of Tourism Insights in 2020, temple stays can be beneficial for both locals and tourists, allowing locals to “revive historical roots and alternative tourists from around the world pursuing personal growth.”

Choe also tells me that spiritual tourism, which is deeply interlinked with wellness tourism, doesn’t even need to take place in a traditionally spiritual setting. “For some people, the experience of being in nature, or forest bathing, can be very spiritual,” she says.

Buddhist temple stays appear to be emerging as East Asia’s answer to the ashram stay. Search interest in ‘temple stay’ has been steadily rising since July 2020, reaching a 10-year high at the start of 2024. South Korea’s popular Templestay program, which connects travelers with 27 temple sleepover experiences across the country, had no availability in the Seoul region when I enquired. Temple stays are also included in Japan itineraries by several operators including Intrepid Travel and Oku Japan, which organized my trip.

While I don’t even consider myself to be a spiritual person, I’ve always found places of worship—of all denominations—to be calming. Built in the 1960s and surrounded by traditional Japanese gardens, the current iteration of the Anrakuji Temple, which has a history stretching back to 815CE (when Kūkai is said to have carved a small statue of Yakushi Nyorai, the deity of healing, while camped here), is no exception.

As I lowered my body into the soothing thermal waters of the rather monastic-looking women’s onsen, a fellow guest from Takarazuka, a city near Osaka, struck up a conversation. “This is my third Shikoku pilgrimage, but I do it by car now,” she chuckled.

Driving the Shikoko Henro is just one example of the evolution of the pilgrimage from a religion-based undertaking to, well, whatever you want it to be. There has been little complaint from the religious establishment. After all, as religion continues to decline globally, secular tourists have played an important role in reviving pilgrimage trails around the world, from Spain’s Camino de Santiago to the Via Francigena linking Canterbury (in the UK) to Rome. With routes typically passing through remote villages, pilgrimage tourism has also been recognized as an important driver of sustainable development. Shukubo stays add another layer to the tourism experience in Japan, while no doubt helping to fund the upkeep of the nation’s many temples.

As I tucked into my generously portioned vegetarian supper later that evening, I spotted Kazumi, a local I had met earlier in our trip, who was doing the pilgrimage with her husband, making a beeline for the table my small international hiking group was sitting at.

“I just wanted to give you something,” she said, handing each of us a beautifully handwoven friendship bracelet. “People showed me such kindness during my first pilgrimage, and I wanted to do something in return … so now I make these,” she explained. I was so floored by her kind gesture that I found myself blinking back tears.

The night would become more emotional, with pilgrims invited to take part in a cleansing ritual known as a Goma that would see us light a candle for deceased loved ones and toss strips of paper bearing our prayers or goals into a fire pit. I found the process somewhat cathartic, encouraging me to recognize and release some personal grief I’d been bottling up.

Taking us deep into a bamboo forest that rivals Kyoto’s Arashiyama Bamboo Grove (but without the crowds), the next section of the trail we tackled on our condensed Shikoku Henro itinerary was the most challenging. But even after a restless sleep on the thin tatami mat in my shukubo room, I had a lightness in my step that day.

While trekking a pilgrimage route and staying in a Japanese temple didn’t bring me closer to any god (even when I was hallucinating with discomfort in the prayer hall), it brought me closer to Japanese culture in an unexpected way. That’s because temple stays can offer a direct line of sight into forces that have shaped the places, people, and ideas of where we travel, even outside of the spiritual context, having transformed “from being sacred sites of a specific religion into inclusive hybrid displays of national heritage,” Susan L. Ross writes in her research for the Journal of Tourism Insights. It seems that transformation brings forth transformation, from the outside in.