Volume 32, 2025
Pilgrimage and the Problem of Compassion: Toward an Ethical Reassessment of the Shikoku Henro
Ronald S. Green
Coastal Carolina University
The Buddhist Pilgrimage in Shikoku Japan (Shikoku Henro) is often described in guidebooks, popular media, and academic literature as a transformative spiritual journey capable of awakening the Bodhisattva ideal through acts of endurance, generosity, and reflection. Yet this dominant narrative obscures a long and troubling history of exclusion, marginalization, and quiet cruelty embedded within the pilgrimage tradition itself. Drawing on Japanese-language sources, personal observation, and the work of scholars such as Mori Masato and Uehara Yoshihiro, this article examines how certain groups, such as impoverished pilgrims, beggars, the disabled, those with Hansen’s disease, and foreign walkers, have been denied the compassion the pilgrimage claims to cultivate. Rather than dismissing the spiritual value of the Henro, I argue for a more ethically grounded reassessment, one that takes seriously the histories of suffering and erasure that continue to haunt this path. If the Shikoku Henro is to remain relevant as a Buddhist practice today, it must do more than offer personal healing; it must also remember those whose footsteps shaped its terrain but were never welcomed upon it.