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熊野詣
Kumano pilgrimage brings worshippers to Hongū, Shingū and Nachi in the Kii Peninsula. Mountain paths, rivers, subsidiary shrines and guides connect the sacred destinations. The practice developed through changing combinations of devotion, ascetic discipline and organized travel.
Hongū lies inland along the river system, Hayatama near its mouth, and Nachi beside the great waterfall. Seiganto-ji adds a Buddhist place of worship at Nachi. Pilgrimage connects shrines and temples with a landscape understood as sacred.
Late-Heian beliefs identified Kumano’s kami as gongen, manifestations of Buddhist beings. Hongū was associated with Amida, Shingū with Yakushi, and Nachi with Thousand-Armed Kannon. These connections helped establish Kumano as a Pure Land accessible within this world.
A fourteenth-century plaque in the Nara National Museum arranges gilt Buddhist figures on a metal plate. Its three central figures represent the Buddhist forms of Kumano’s principal deities. The object gives a tangible form to the relationships expressed in pilgrimage belief.
Scholars interpret historical pilgrimage as a discipline of symbolic death and rebirth: leaving ordinary life, entering the mountains and returning after worship. Pure Land and renewal describe the religious significance sought through the journey.
One major approach led from Kyoto through Osaka and Wakayama to Tanabe, then inland along Nakahechi. Ōhechi followed the coast, Kohechi connected Kōyasan, and Iseji approached from Ise. Their use changed with the people making the journey. The Ōmine Okugakemichi also links the ascetic landscapes of Yoshino and Ōmine with Kumano.
Water travel formed part of pilgrimage. After reaching Hongū along Nakahechi, pilgrims could continue by boat down the Kumano River to Shingū. Mie’s cultural-property account cites Fujiwara no Munetada’s 1109 journey downstream in hired boats and back upstream. River and footpath belonged to the same transport network.
Ōji shrines honour subsidiary deities of Kumano and provided places for offerings, rites and rest. The collective name “Ninety-nine Ōji” evokes their abundance. Records differ in the number visited, the stops chosen and the ceremonies performed.
Sendatsu guided groups and instructed them in rites along the route. At the sacred centres, oshi arranged accommodation and assisted worship. Continuing relationships between worshippers and these hosts are documented in prayers, genealogies and records of patronage rights.
Preparatory purification, ablutions, sutra offerings and performances accompanied aristocratic journeys; poetry gatherings occurred on some occasions. Practice varied by guide and party. Fujiwara no Teika’s record of the 1201 pilgrimage is one important witness to this organized travel.
A Wakayama education-board report quotes the record of Go-Toba’s party on the tenth day of the traditional tenth month in 1201. It visits Ōji shrines including Aitokusan, calls at the Komatsubara imperial lodging, and later records crossing the Hidaka River and proceeding to Iwauchi Ōji. Worship sites, a lodging station and a river thus appear within one journey.
The report abbreviates intervening entries, so this is a selected sequence rather than an uninterrupted daily itinerary. It shows how devotion depended on stopping places and crossings.
Stories preserved in the early-Heian Nihon ryōiki show Kumano being understood as a place of religious discipline. Scholars identify the retired emperor Uda’s visit in 907 as an early documented imperial pilgrimage.
Shirakawa first visited in 1090. After his second pilgrimage in 1116, repeated imperial journeys became a prominent feature of the age of retired emperors. Toba, Go-Shirakawa and Go-Toba continued the practice, supporting religious institutions, buildings and accommodation.
Women also made historical Kumano pilgrimages. Taikenmon-in and Bifukumon-in accompanied the retired emperor Toba and also travelled on separate occasions. The record of Shūmeimon-in’s 1210 party describes rites and flooding along the way. Their journeys depended on guides, lodging and river crossings too.
After the Jōkyū conflict of 1221, the great era of imperial journeys diminished. Provincial warriors, local landholders and ordinary people became increasingly important. Guide-host networks continued, while routes diversified. “Ant-like pilgrimage to Kumano” evokes the succession of travellers.
Late-medieval Nachi pilgrimage mandalas combine the waterfall, religious buildings, legends and visiting people. Religious fundraisers, ascetics and nuns known as bikuni are thought to have used such images for explanation and soliciting support. The precise words and settings of these performances remain incompletely known.
Under Edo-period administration, official roads and distance markers altered the route system. Some older shrines declined; others received protection or became village tutelary shrines. Saigoku pilgrimage also sustained visits to Kumano. Nineteenth-century gazetteers recorded older sites as places of historical interest.
Meiji policies separating kami worship from Buddhism and banning Shugendō disrupted Kumano’s older religious combinations. Buddhist images and objects were removed from some shrines, and pilgrimage declined into the wartime period. Today’s institutional boundaries took shape through these changes.
Early-twentieth-century shrine mergers threatened some sites along the route. Tanabe’s tourism bureau describes how Tsugizakura-ōji and its cedar trees faced removal under the 1906 merger programme, and how Minakata Kumagusu’s opposition helped save them. Local protection also sustained the religious sites along the road.
Postwar road and railway development changed access, leaving some mountain paths little used. Walking revived toward the end of the twentieth century. In 2004, associated sacred sites and routes entered the World Heritage list as the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range. Worship and heritage travel now coexist.
Hongū, Shingū and Nachi.
No. Several approaches form a route network.
No. The collective name evokes abundance; records and itineraries differ.
Sendatsu guided the journey and its rites; oshi hosted pilgrims and assisted worship at the sacred centres.
No. Meiji separation policies transformed the earlier religious combinations.
Its selected entries connect Ōji worship, the Komatsubara lodging stop, the Hidaka crossing and Iwauchi Ōji.