ABSTRACT
In the past decade, anime fans in Japan have begun zealously visiting historic temples, local shrines, townhouses, schools, and other ordinary streetscapes that inspired the background locations of famous animation works. Anime fans today are willing to identify these real-world landscapes, visit them in person, and then share their experience with other fans online. This emergent form of tourism is derived from an ancient term that refers to Buddhist pilgrimage in a Japanese religious context: seichi junrei. In order to distinguish the new derivative usage of seichi junrei from the term's conventional meaning, it is useful to translate the seichi junrei of anime fans as “anime pilgrimage” here.
