The Kyoto Trail: Sacred Sites on a Pseudo-Pilgrimage

How should we conceive of a secular walking trail that traverses a country’s premier holy sites in and around its spiritual capital? The Kyoto Trail is something of an oddity in comparison to the plentiful sacred walking paths throughout Japan. The 84-kilometer circuit probes and circumambulates the city of Kyoto via a horseshoe-like arc. It links an array of holy mountains with lush realms of nature and connects dozens of famous pilgrimage locations of exceptionally varied descriptions. However, while the trail sometimes overlaps with medieval pilgrimage routes, it is a relatively new course, established in the early 1990s through initiatives by the City of Kyoto and several allied partners. This paper looks carefully at the trajectory of the footpath to consider (1) how the trail itself is a fantastic primer of Japanese religion and pilgrimage culture and (2) what language and theoretical orientations might be best employed to analyse that which looks like pilgrimage, but is not, in fact, pilgrimage.