ABSTRACT
The Shikoku henro 四国遍路, a roughly 1,200-kilometer circular pilgrimage route that links eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the island of Shikoku, is probably Japan's most famous Buddhist pilgrimage. A notable characteristic of this lengthy journey is that it includes features that allow a select few pilgrims to rise to authoritative prominence. In this research, I critically examine the Web-published pilgrimage accounts of Kushima Hiroshi 串間洋, a fifty-eight-year-old software engineer and henro resource aficionado; Akimoto Kaito 秋元海十, a thirty-three-year-old struggling actor at the time of his pilgrimage who attempted to upload a real-time video record of his experiences walking the route; and Fujita Yoshihiro 藤田佳宏, a boy who began his pilgrimage career at the tender age of three and who is heralded as a pilgrimage prodigy. I primarily consider how each pilgrim rises to authoritative prominence and, in doing so, highlight both unique factors in their pilgrimage biographies and commonalities among them. I find that only Fujita derives authority in part through the traditional leadership structures of the henro, such as the officially sanctioned system of pilgrim guides, or sendatsu 先達. Kushima's influence is shown to stem from the facilitation of information and communication avenues to a decentralised population of pilgrims, while Akimoto and Fujita's stardom is the product of considerable promotional efforts. I argue that while the Web is an essential element in these pilgrims’ rise to a position of authority, Internet postings never fully displace traditional print, film and audio media in the biographies of these pilgrim leaders. In fact, this research shows that computer-mediated communication (CMC) can be seen to function in positively reinforcing relationships with other media. These results offer caution against undue separation of CMC from other forms of media in discussions of Japanese religion and reinforce methodological assertions that view religion as shaping technology, rather than vice versa.
