Pilgrimage growth in the modern world: Meanings and implications

Religion 37 (2007) 210e229 www.elsevier.com/locate/religion

Pilgrimage growth in the modern world: Meanings and implications* Ian Reader University of Manchester, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Abstract This article examines the contemporary growth of pilgrimages. Examples are provided from variety of traditions and parts of the world, from Japan to Europe, with particular attention paid to the Shikoku and Santiago de Compostela pilgrimages that have experienced extensive growth in recent years. It also draws attention to the growing number of new pilgrimage sites that are not associated with any specific religious traditions or that have ‘New Age’ associations. While some of the factors accounting for this growth involve continuities from past eras, there are also specifically modern factors. Also considered in this article is how some modern pilgrims appear to repudiate organised religion even while visiting sites normally associated with established religious traditions. Rather than implying some form of religious revival, contemporary pilgrimage growth may, then, be seen as evidence of an increasing turn away from religion as an organised entity. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction An article published by the Agence Press France on 6 August 2004 announced that a record number of pilgrimsdsome 217,000 in alldhad made the arduous pilgrimage to Amarnath, the *

This article was initially written and published in Japanese as Ian Reader 2005 Gendai sekai ni okeru junrei no koˆryuˆ: sono imi suru mono, in the Japanese annual journal Gendai Shuˆkyoˆ, 2005, pp. 279e305. This English article is a revised and updated version of that article. E-mail address: [email protected] 0048-721X/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.religion.2007.06.009

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cave site in Kashmir in Northern India that contains an ice lingam said to represent the Hindu deity Shiva. The pilgrimage to this remote mountain cave occurs each year between 15 July and the end of August. Officials had noted that, even by early August 2004, pilgrim numbers had surpassed the previous record number of 175,000 and were expected to reach 300,000. This extraordinary growth has occurred even while the region, at the centre of IndianePakistani conflicts, has suffered much terrorist activity in recent years, and even while attacks had been launched by Muslim rebels on pilgrims in previous years (see Agence Press France, 6 August 2004). Amarnath is certainly not the only major pilgrimage site to have experienced exceptional growth in recent years. Across the globe, pilgrimage centres associated with just about every religious tradition, as well as some that are independent of any organised religious tradition, have been receiving growing numbers of pilgrims. Prominent pilgrimage sites in the Catholic world such as Lourdes in France, Medjugorje in Croatia, Fatima in Portugal, Santiago de Compostela in Spain and San Giovanni Rotondo in Italy have experienced significant growth in pilgrim numbers, especially since the 1990s. Medjugorje is a good example of a recently formed pilgrimage that has become popular in a global context in the past few years. It initially rose to prominence after visions of the Virgin Mary had been seen by a group of young people in the Bosnia-Herzegovina region of the then-Yugoslavia in 1981. It emerged as a pilgrimage site as political problems and the threat of war began to loom over the region. Medjugorje became associated with Catholic piety, with aspirations for peaceful resolution of the conflict and with expressions of regional identity. As a result, pilgrim numbers grew rapidly through the 1980s. Over a million persons made the pilgrimage there in 1990, seeking solace at a time of imminent civil war. The dangerous climate of the early 1990s, when the region was wracked by warfare, caused pilgrim numbers to fall considerably. Now, however, as the area has been pacified, numbers have begun to rise again and now again exceed one million a year. Significantly, too, Medjugorje has transcended its former status as a regional pilgrimage centre and has become a major international pilgrimage centre, with a particularly strong American Catholic presence.1 Other prominent European Catholic pilgrimage sites similarly experiencing a rise in popularity include Santiago de Compostela in the far west of Spain. It was one of the most prominent pilgrimages of Europe in the medieval period. After several centuries of decline, it has seen a remarkable rise in pilgrim numbers. Santiago’s recent growth has been striking because the growth cannot be linked to increased availability of modern transportation, for more and more pilgrims travel there on foot, horseback or bicycle. The authorities at Santiago give a certificate, the Compostela, to those who have travelled at least 100 kilometres to Santiago on foot or by horse, or 200 kilometres by bicycle. The number of certificates given out has grown from just 2491 in 1986 to 74,614 in 2003. Pope John Paul II declared 1999 to be a Holy Year, in which it would particularly be meritorious to make a pilgrimage. The number thereby rose to over 150,000.2 These numbers,

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See http://www.medjugorje.hr/ulazakenstipe.htm for a general overview of the shrine and of its pilgrim numbers see http://www.medjugorje.org for evidence of its international dimensions. There is significant American Catholic support for this shrine and for another prominent Marian pilgrimage centre, that of Fatima in Portugal, because these sites are closely associated with anti-Communist sentiments and apocalyptic leanings that are important in US Catholic discourse. See Wojcik 1997, pp. 60e8. 2 These figures come from the web site of The Confraternity of St James, an official British body associated with the Santiago pilgrimage: http://www.csj.org.uk/present.htm.

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one should stress, only relate to those who have made the journey to Santiago by foot, horse or bicycle. Considerably more still do so by cars, trains and buses. Catholic pilgrimage sites have also grown in popularity also in the USA. Most notable is that of Our Lady of Clearwater in Florida, which has developed since 1996. The transformation there of a modern commercial building into a site associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary shows how pilgrimage and the miraculous can appear in highly modern contexts. On 17 December 1996 an image of the Virgin Mary was seen on the windows of a modern commercial building there. News of this apparition spread, and crowds began to visit the site until, within a few years, Our Lady of Clearwater, as the apparition had become known, had received over one million visitors. There is a readily accepted scientific explanation of why and how the apparition is seen on the building: the apparition is a reflection created by a combination of physical and other factors, such as sunlight filtering through the trees. Yet the acceptance of this rational explanation has not diminished the faith of visitors, who still view the apparition as a manifestation of the Virgin Mary. The apparition thus remains a ‘miraculous’ manifestation of the sacred in the modern world. Such has been the potency of the miraculous apparition that the building, initially a commercial building owned by a business company, has been turned into a devotional centre. It is now run by a lay Catholic devotional society led by a Catholic woman, Rita Ring, who claims to receive messages from Jesus, Mary and God. The building itself has been renamed the Mary Image Building. The site flourishes as a pilgrimage site even without any priestly involvement or direct association with the Catholic Church. The active promoters of the site, including Ring, have all been members of the laity (see Swatos, 2002). )da 1400 In Japan, too, pilgrimages such as the Shikoku pilgrimage (Shikoku henro kilometre-long pilgrimage route that circles the island of Shikoku and that involves the pilgrim visiting 88 Buddhist templesdhave also experienced increased popularity. I began my research on this pilgrimage in 1984 and have visited Shikoku regularly since then. While the numbers, primarily those travelling by organised bus pilgrimage tour, grew during the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a significant increase in numbers of pilgrims of sorts those travelling by bus, by car, and on foot) since the late 1990s, a growth confirmed to me by several pilgrimage temple priests as well as by officials of the main bus companies. The Iyo Tetsu Company of Matsuyama in Shikoku, the single largest carrier of pilgrims on the island, told me, during a recent visit, that pilgrim numbers had increased by around 30% between 1998 and 2000 alone (see Reader, 2005, pp. 24e8). A recent study by the Japanese sociologists Osada Koˆichi, Sakata Masaaki and Seki Mitsuo also indicates a significant increase in pilgrim numbers (see Osada et al., 2003). While the very large majority of pilgrims in Shikoku continue to travel in organised groups by bus (see Seki, 1999; Reader, 2005, pp. 152e4), there has also been a sizeable increase in the numbers of those who now walk. By the 1980s, the dominance of bus and other mechanised forms of pilgrimage had become so strong that the numbers of pilgrims on foot could barely be counted in the hundreds, ) and many people I knew in Shikoku had wrongly feared that foot pilgrims (aruki henro would die out. On my first visit to Shikoku in 1984, I spent six weeks on the pilgrimage path and encountered fewer than ten persons on foot. Yet on a single afternoon alone in April 2000, I met more than twice that number on a four kilometre part of the route between two of the temples. Informants I interviewed at that time, from temple priests to persons who organise pilgrimage associations to those running pilgrims’ lodges, all told me that the numbers of aruki henro had increased exponentially to around 3000 per year by the end of the century. Recent

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evidence indicates that their numbers have continued to grow. The numbers of accounts written by foot pilgrimsdwhether commercially published books, web-logs or Internet site discussion boardsdhas grown extensively.3 It is not only pilgrimages associated with established religious traditions such as Catholicism and Buddhism that have flourished. New and alternative forms of religious and spiritual culture have also emerged. In ‘New Age’ culture, for example, pilgrimage has become a flourishing practice, with popular sites associated with the New Age movement (broadly defined) such as Glastonbury in England and Sedona in the USA experiencing rising numbers of selfprofessed pilgrims making visits there. Both Glastonbury and Sedona had had some spiritual significance prior to the rise of ‘New Age’ ideas. Glastonbury was a Christian pilgrimages site from the medieval period onwards, and Sedona was a place of significance in native Amerindian culture. But both have been assimilated into New Age culture. They become magnets for a wide variety of New Age seekers who view them as locations where the sacred power of ‘Gaia’dthe term widely used in New Age to refer to Earth as a living organismdis manifest and can be accessed in this world, and who frame their journeys in the context of pilgrimage (see Ivakhiv, 2001). In addition, various scholars, including Ian Reader and Tony Walter (1993), Jill Dubisch (2004), Lori Beaman (2006), Lee Gilmore (2006), and Jennifer Selby (2006), have drawn attention to newly developing journeys and sites that, while not linked to any particular religious traditions, evince characteristics traditionally associated with pilgrimagesdfor example, acts of devotion, concepts of healing on emotional and other levels, and places that have speak of issues of identity and belonging. Thus Dubisch’s account of the ‘Ride to the Wall’, the annual motorbike journey made by American veterans of the Vietnam War to visit the Vietnam Memorial in Washington (see Sellars and Walter, 1993) sees this journey as a modern care of pilgrimageda term that the Vietnam veteran motorcycle participants themselves consider fitting (see Dubisch, 2004). Equally, the continuing visits of fans to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home and burial place in Memphis, Tennessee, have been seen by various writers as a pilgrimage site. Besides devotional attitudes of visitors, there are the commemorative events that occur, especially during the annual Elvis Memorial Week each August around the anniversary of his death. Visitors even tell of healings (see King, 1993). Other places and events that may be counted as pilgrimage include Ground Zero, the site of the September 11, 2001, events in New York (see Selby, 2006), and the annual Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert each summer (see Gilmore, 2006).4 It is not pilgrim numbers alone that are on the rise. The growth in pilgrim journeys has also been mirrored, and perhaps even partially stimulated, by an increasing media interest in the 3

A PhD student of mine, John Shultz, is currently researching the written accounts of Shikoku foot pilgrims, with a focus on those published since 1999. There are several dozen such volumes, with several more appearing every year. In addition, web sites such as www.kushima.com/henro maintain lists of recently published pilgrimage accounts (http://www.kushima.com/henro/books) and of several hundred web sites with accounts of walking the pilgrimage (http://www.kushima.com/henro/links/links_walking.htm). 4 Tony Walter and I applied the term ‘secular pilgrimages’ to such journeys related to places that had no direct connection to specific religious traditions or buildings, but we also argued that there was no evident difference between pilgrimages to supposedly ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ sites (see Reader, 1993, pp. 5e10) The attempted differentiation between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ pilgrimage appears to add little to the field. Hence I now do not find the term ‘secular pilgrimage’ a helpful term, and I no longer use it.

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phenomenon of pilgrimage. Again, the Shikoku pilgrimage in Japan offers a good example (see footnote 3). The published accounts of pilgrims are just one aspect of contemporary growth in media coverage of the Shikoku pilgrimage. There are now many guidebooks to the pilgrimage, along with colourful and often beautifully photographed volumes portraying the scenic beauties of the Shikoku temples and the pilgrimage route. CD ROMs, DVDs and web sites, some of which provide forums through which pilgrims can discuss them with others, and others of which enable pilgrimage temples to publicise themselves, have merely served to increase the amount of material available about the pilgrimage and to extend interest in it. Mass media organisations in Japan have also contributed by producing various documentaries about the pilgrimage in recent times. NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, has aired popular programmes on the subject, such as its Shikoku hachijuˆhakksho: kokoro no tabi (‘The Shikoku pilgrimage: a journey of the spirit’) series of eighty-eight programmes of thirty minutes each, initially broadcast on Sunday mornings between 1998 and 2000 and then re-broadcast in 2004e05. This series, which emphasised the photogenic aspects of Shikoku and its natural scenery, as well as the legends, statues and cultural treasures to be found at the pilgrimage temples, has been extremely influential in encouraging Japanese people, especially from urban areas to go on the pilgrimage in recent years (see Reader, 2005, p. 25, pp.144e5, 156e7, 180e3; Reader, 2007). Shikoku is but one example of how increasing media interest has been part of the rising interest in pilgrimage. Nancy Frey’s (1998) study of the Santiago pilgrimage indicates that similar patterns are at work in that pilgrimage, with numerous books being published on that route, along with ever more sources through which pilgrims can keep in touch with one other, including an emergent cyber-community of pilgrims linked together through the Web. In the years since Frey’s book, media and Internet interest in Santiago have grown, with numerous sites now devoted to the pilgrimage and to friends of the pilgrimage.5

Multiple motives and continuities My studies of Shikoku pilgrims, based on materials ranging from journals and accounts written in pre-modern times, to petitions and prayers left at the pilgrimage temples, to recent publications and interviews conducted with pilgrims in the past two decades, all suggest a variety of motivations for the increase in pilgrimages, with few pilgrims identifying just one reason. Memorialising one’s deceased kin, creating merit as preparation for one’s own death, engaging in ascetic practices, seeking enlightenment (a theme that may be articulated in other contexts as a spiritual journey to God), searching for salvation, seeking miracles and solace in the face of misfortune, seeking healing and other practical benefits, seeking spiritual help to ward off bad luck, performing penitence for sins, fulfilling vows escaping from one’s everyday surroundings, even if only temporarilydall are recurrent themes in the present as much as they were in the past (see Reader, 2005; Osada et al., 2003, pp. 327e61). Many of these themes have also been outlined in studies of pilgrimage focusing on Christianity (see Turner and Turner, 1978), which also argues that pilgrims are stepping outside of normative 5

See, for example, http://www.geocities.com/friends_usa_santiago/ and http://usuarios.lycos.es/ViaEuropaea/ingles/ index.htm.

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frameworks in order to seek an alternative, if normally temporary, anti-structural new sense of community and belonging, and Sumption, 1975), indicating that such themes may well be universal in pilgrimage contexts. Other studies of pilgrimage motivations have shown how the articulation of gendered identities (see Dubisch, 1995), the reinforcement of collective representations of place, regional identity and belonging (see Feldhaus, 2003), and of the external pilgrimage as an exteriorised expression of an internal spiritual journey (see Howard, 1980, pp. 10e1, Morinis, 1984, p. 297) all can be discerned as recurrent motivational themes in pilgrimage across the ages. I have also indicated the extent to which family and regional influences have also been a key motivation for Japanese pilgrims across the ages, with many of my fieldwork respondents in Shikoku telling me that their initial impulse to becoming a pilgrim was because one or both parents or grandparents had been devoted pilgrims. Or there were regional influences, which meant that they were taken, at a young age, on pilgrimage with other members of their communities (see Reader, 2005, pp. 92e9). These themes may well be as relevant to modern pilgrims as to those in earlier times, even if some of the nuances that surround them may have been modified in contemporary contexts. Thus Nancy Frey’s study of the Santiago de Compostela Pilgrim’s Way notes that for many modern pilgrims, their journey is spurred by a sense of suffering, as it was in the past, but with suffering now more commonly related to mental unease (see Frey, 1998, p. 219). Similarly, while many of the pilgrims I interviewed in Shikoku might have been worried about their health few if any, were beset by the imminent threat of death through illness, as was frequently the case with pilgrims in the past (see Reader, 2005, pp. 132e4; Maeda, 1971, pp. 258e61). Dubisch, writing of pilgrims to the Church of Annunciation, a noted pilgrimage shrine on the Greek island of Tinos, also notes the prevalence of enduring themes, such as the recurrent motive of sufferings and the search for healing, the continuing stories of miracles that continue to circulate among pilgrims, and the continuing tendency to make return pilgrimages of thanks for prayers that have been granted, and as a result of vows made on earlier pilgrimages of supplication (see Dubisch, 1995, pp. 69e73, 87e95, 214e9). In other words, there are many enduring motivational themes in pilgrimages across the ages, even if some of these have changed in terms of nuance- for example, in terms of how ‘spiritual’ malaise might be more prevalent in the present day than physical illness on pilgrimages such as Shikoku and Santiago. Some motivations and themes that were prevalent in earlier times may also be amplified in the modern era; the desire to break away from or escape, albeit temporarily, from one’s existing situation may have long motivated pilgrims to leave their abodes and go on pilgrimage, but this has certainly been enhanced by the increasing scope for escape provided by tourism and by modern transport facilities and the like, that are especially prevalent in the modern day.

Modernity and social influences Alongside personal motivations are a variety of social factors that help create the context in which persons today may be led to visit pilgrimage sites. As with individual motivations, many of these factors cannot be identified as specifically ‘modern’. However, they can be seen as being particularly strongly linked to the process of modernity in ways that suggest that they are influential for large numbers of modern pilgrims to a degree that was not previously the case. I will

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caution here against necessarily viewing the rising numbers of pilgrims as evidence of rising levels of faith. One must guard against assuming that the rising numbers of pilgrims imply clear evidence of a modern ‘religious revival’.6 As I will suggest, the situation is more complex, for pilgrimage growth in the contemporary era is also contingent on factors that have little to do with religion as an organised entity.

The modern expansion of pilgrimage opportunities Perhaps the most striking practical factor facilitating pilgrimage growth day has been the increased opportunities for travel. Improvements in health and medical care, along with economic improvements, that have provided increasing numbers of people with the wherewithal to travel, have helped make pilgrimage accessible to larger numbers of persons. The continual improvements in mass transport systems have made pilgrimage sites increasingly accessible. All these factors are evident in the expansion of Shikoku pilgrim numbers and have also contributed to a rising age profile among pilgrims. Until the middle of the twentieth century, pilgrims had little choice but to travel by foot in Shikoku, and if they came from outside the island, and especially from more distant parts of Japan, the time they had to spend travelling, almost invariably on foot, also added much time to their journeys. The ascetic nature of travel, along with the time needed to perform the pilgrimage, made it difficult for all but the most dedicated to do so. The prevalence of disease also meant that illness and death were recurrent features of pilgrimage experience (see Maeda, 1971, pp. 99e103; Hoshino, 2001, pp. 111e2; Kouame´, 2001, pp. 115e24). In the 1950s, however, a revolution occurred with the development of pilgrimage package tours, initially by the Shikoku-based bus and rail company the Iyo Tetsu Company, which inaugurated the first regular bus package tours of the pilgrimage in April 1953 and which was shortly after followed by other transport firms. These organised tours made the pilgrimage safer, swifter and more accessible to wider numbers of persons. Especially in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, when Japan’s economy was growing fast and when having money to spend on activities that were formerly seen as extravagances such as travel and comfort, pilgrimage gained an aura of respectability. Pilgrims in Shikoku had been viewed as impoverished (indeed, many pilgrims begged to sustain themselves) and as potentially unruly and disruptive influences (see Reader, 2005, pp. 132e5; Maeda, 1971, pp. 258e61), but the advent of bus tours indicated that they were now well-off enough to travel in some style. Coupled with massive improvements in Japan’s internal transport structure, especially after the opening of the bullet train network in 1964, the journey to and from Shikoku became quicker and easier. Alongside Japan’s economic growth, pension systems, and increasing life expectancy, these processes have not just helped increase pilgrim numbers but altered the demographics of the pilgrimage community. In the period since the first bus tours in 1953, the age and gender profiles of 6

It should be noted that this article was initially written in Japanese for a Japanese academic journal running a thematic feature on the question of a ‘religious revival’ in the modern world. The journal editors asked me, in the light of my work on pilgrimage growth in Shikoku and elsewhere, to discuss this phenomenon in the context of ‘religious revival’.

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Shikoku pilgrims have especially shown an increase in older, and female, pilgrims, to the extent that nowadays female pilgrims are in the majority, when in earlier eras they were very much a minority, and pilgrims over the age of sixty now constitute the single largest age group of pilgrims (see Osada et al., 2003, pp. 226e31; Reader, 2005, p. 78). In India, too, an improving transport system, coupled with the development of a national education system, has led to an expanding pilgrimage community. The dawning national consciousness that has come from improved education had enhanced interest in visiting sacred pilgrimage places closely identified with Indian or, more specifically, Hindu national identity. Transport improvements have helped foster a growth in travel that combines elements of pilgrimage with tourism and that is centred on visiting important temples (see Fuller, 1992, pp. 204e5). Often, too, as at Amarnath, which stands close to the disputed border with Pakistan, these pilgrimages are given added impetus by feelings of Hindu nationalism, with pilgrimages becoming an implicit statement of affirmation of Hindu identity. That factor is also heavily promoted by the Indian mass media, which has helped transform pilgrimages into mass, national events associated with Hindu culture.7 Other pilgrimages have similarly benefited from mass rapid transportation, such as with the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca during the last month of the Islamic year. During this special pilgrimage period the number of pilgrims has grown from fewer than 100,000 in the early 1950s, with the majority of these coming from Saudi Arabia and its environs, to an annual 2.5 million pilgrims at present, with the numbers now restricted by a quota placed on each country according to its population, so as to ensure that the facilities around Mecca can cope with numbers.8 Central to this growth has been the ready availability of economic air transport, along with the development of an international airport close to Mecca, and of modern facilities in the region to cater to pilgrims. Citizens of distant countries can now arrive in safety and comfort in hours rather than after weeks or months of hardship. Previously, it would have taken Muslims from regions such as West Africa and Southeast Asia many months of difficult travel to reach the Saudi Arabian peninsula. Their journey would have been fraught with enough dangers to limit the number of pilgrims. Modern developments have made the pilgrimage accessible to Muslims from all walks of life, of all ages, and from anywhere in the world, at a time, also, when global conditions and increased communications have helped foster a sense of community in the Muslim world that transcends national boundaries and that plays its part in encouraging large numbers of pilgrims from all over the Muslim world to want to journey to Mecca and become part of a worldwide community.

Reaffirming the local: the search for tradition and cultural identity A further factor in the contemporary growth of pilgrimage has been the search for national and cultural identity. Here the globalising tendencies of the modern world can be seen as having a negative influence. The reaction has been a turn back to the local. While globalisation has increased cultural interpenetration as well as stimulated movement in geographical terms, it has also 7

I want to thank Professor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad of the Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University, for his helpful comments on this issue. 8 The numbers of those who apply to participate in the hajj far exceed this number, according to various web sites about the hajj, such as http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa022701.htm.

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increased fears of cultural erosion and has spurred interest in cultural and personal identities that counteract the power of the global. Again, the Shikoku pilgrimage provides a good example. Many of the Japanese pilgrims whom I interviewed in Shikoku affirmed the importance of the pilgrimage as a means of discovering their cultural roots and of finding a sense of Japanese identity. That identity is closely linked to notions of Japanese tradition, which many pilgrims see as embedded in the pilgrimage. This factor was not significant in Shikoku prior to recent times. It came to the fore in studies of pilgrimage in Japan in the 1980s, which highlighted how tensions between internationalisation and globalisation on the one hand and a desire to counter-balance these tendencies with a reaffirmation of Japanese cultural identity on the other became a prevalent factor in pilgrimage growth that era (see Hoshino, 1981; Reader, 1987).9 It has continued to be critical in the contemporary appeal of the pilgrimage, widely articulated by pilgrims I interviewed during my most recent visits to Shikoku in the late 1990s and at the turn of the new century. For many pilgrims, the pilgrimage as a symbol of ‘traditional’ Japanese identity has become more potent in modern times, as Japan has undergone various problems related to its economic downturn and accompanying social turbulence. Take, for example, a female pilgrim from the Tokyo region who was in her mid-sixties and who was sustained by her pension. She was representative of the ‘modern’ class of older pilgrims who have become dominant features in Shikoku pilgrimage. I interviewed her in Shikoku in April 2000. She informed me that she was going on the pilgrimage to find out more about herself and about her cultural heritage as a Japanese person in the modern world. As Japan had become more modern and more ‘Western’ as a result of global interaction and trade, and as it had undergone upheavals as a result of economic problems, she felt that it was in danger of losing its sense of tradition. This change, she worried, was leading to an erosion of core values. She saw the Shikoku pilgrimage, in which many old traditions had endured for several centuries as a manifestation of ancient Japanese tradition. One facet of Shikoku that particularly struck her was that, in her eyes, the children she met in Shikoku had more respect for older people than those she had encountered in Tokyo. By making the pilgrimage, she was engaging with her cultural roots and strengthening her sense of identity in the modern world. I heard this motivation many times during my fieldwork in Shikoku (see Reader, 2005, p. 82). Sometimes, this interest can be manifest on a trans-national level as well. For example, Frey’s study of pilgrims on the road to Santiago shows that for many young Europeans, Europe as an entity has become the focus of their identity. Through performing the Santiago pilgrimage, which is deeply embedded in European history, they are finding a sense of European identityda sense that may serve as a counterweight to concerns about globalisation as eroding European values (see Frey, 1998, pp. 227e8).

Religious authorities and pilgrimage promotion Another important factor in the modern growth of pilgrimages is the role of religious authorities in promoting pilgrimage. Of course, religious authorities have long striven to attract pilgrims, 9

There is some evidence that certain pilgrimagesdnotably the 33 temple Saikoku pilgrimagedwere linked with a growing sense of national consciousness and identity by the Tokugawa (1603e1867) era: see Foard, 1981. But this linkage was not the case with Shikoku.

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such as by promoting miracle stories about their sites and saints. But this aspect of pilgrimage has increased in scope and has taken on a distinctly modern dimension, especially through the extensive use of modern media to promote pilgrimages (see Reader, 2007). It has been given less attention than it might have receiveddthe consequence of the influence of the anthropologist Victor Turner. In their influential study of pilgrimage in Christian contexts, Victor Turner and Edith Turner argued that pilgrimages develop as largely spontaneous events through the actions of pilgrims who ‘vote with their feet’ and flock to holy sites, usually in response to reports of miracles (see Turner and Turner, 1978, p. 25). Turner’s interest in what he saw as the anti-structural and temporary feelings of community (termed communitas) (see Turner, 1969, 1974; Turner and Turner, 1978) formed by pilgrims while on pilgrimage, has been seminal in stimulating studies of pilgrimage but has also led to imbalance. In seeing pilgrimage as an anti-structural, anti-authoritarian activity, in which the acts of pilgrims are contrasted to the wishes of authorities and in which pilgrims are depicted as motivated by the ‘rumour of miracles’ and ‘voting with the feet’, Turner paid little attention to the role of religious authorities in creating pilgrimage centres. Turner’s model of pilgrimage as a manifestation of folk religious sentiment grounded in the spontaneous actions of ordinary people who transform places into pilgrimage centres has been challenged by recent studies that have drawn attention to the ways in which ecclesiastical authorities may at times throw their weight behind emergent pilgrimage cults and even manufacture pilgrimage routes in order to secure new religious clienteles. In my examination of new Buddhist pilgrimage routes in Japan I interviewed many Buddhist priests and officials of Buddhist organisations who emphasised the importance of pilgrimages as a means of bringing people to temples and advocated the creation of new pilgrimage routes to facilitate this process. Priests who were active in developing a new pilgrimage route centred on the Buddhist figure Kannon in her guise as boke fuˆji Kannon (Kannon, the guardian against senility, an attribute that has become increasingly important in contemporary Japan, with its ageing population) in the northern part of the island of Kyuˆshuˆ, spoke of their concerns at the decline in the affiliation to institutional and temple Buddhism in modern Japan, and stated that they saw pilgrimage as a means of redressing this decline by attracting people into temples on an individual basis, regardless of any prior sectarian connections. Rather than a spontaneous creation of miracle-seeking pilgrims, the Kyuˆshuˆ boke fuˆji pilgrimage was a top-down priestly creation (see Reader, 1996). In Shikoku, the activities of the Shikoku Reijoˆkai, the Shikoku Pilgrimage Temples Association, the official body that represents the eighty-eight pilgrimage temples and coordinates their activities, has helped in promoting the pilgrimage through a variety of means. Those means range from publishing guidebooks and collections of miracle tales to working with media and commercial organisations (see Reader, 2005, pp. 167e71). Similarly, studies have shown how Catholic authorities have promoted nascent pilgrimage sites such as Lourdes as a means of restating the Catholic Church’s authority in a secularising age (see Dahlberg, 1991, pp. 30e50, esp. 31e2). Ruth Harris, in her detailed study of how Lourdes developed as a major pilgrimage site, illustrates how local and regional religious authorities played a seminal role in this process. She also shows how the lack of ecclesiastical support was a significant factor in the failure of other Marian apparition sites, even in the same region as Lourdes, to develop into significant pilgrimage centres (see Harris, 1999). Examination of the contemporary global growth in pilgrimages underlines the problem in viewing pilgrimage through the lens of an anti-structural activity of ordinary people acting in implicit

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opposition to religious authorities. This is not to say that Turner’s view is wholly unwarranted. The example cited of the shrine of Our Lady of Clearwater in Florida shows that Turner can be correct, but not as the sole or necessarily the prime explanation. Certainly, in the context of the contemporary growth of pilgrimages, one needs to pay attention to the promotional roles of those who control pilgrimage sites. They may well regard pilgrimage not as a potential challenge to their authority, which is the main implication of Turner’s analysis, but as an opportunity for increasing that authority and of reviving faith. Besides the already cited example of Shikoku, in which the Buddhist priests overseeing the pilgrimage sites have assiduously utilised the pilgrimage as a means of promoting Buddhist messages in an era in which Buddhism has institutionally faced an erosion of support levels and is generally regarded as being in decline (see, for example, Covell, 2005), one could also, in this context, draw attention to the Roman Catholic Church, especially in Europe. Although it is generally considered that the Roman Catholic Church in Europe has been afflicted with patterns of decline similar to those of other mainstream religious traditions, especially relating to falling church attendances,10 the assertions of decline may seem contradicted by the evidence that has emerged of rising number of pilgrims visiting Catholic pilgrimage sites such as Santiago, San Giovanni di Rotondo and Lourdes. The growth of pilgrimages has been assisted by the promotional activities of Catholic authorities, most notably those of the late Pope John Paul II. He devoted much energy to promoting pilgrimages and to attempting to revive Catholicism through his travels. His frequent travels around the globe were framed in the context of pilgrimages. His first foreign trip as Pope, in 1979, involved a visit to the prominent Mexican pilgrimage centre of Guadalupe, a place to which he made three further pilgrimages in 1990, 1999 and 2002. His frequent visits to pilgrimage sites such as Santiago, which he visited in 1982 and 1989, helped to enhance its profile and to increase the numbers there (see Frey, 1998, p. 249). John Paul’s political orientations, in which he not only emphasised the Catholic Church’s traditional anti-Communist stance but added to it through his own background as a member of the Polish Church during the Communist and Cold war eras, also gave impetus to his support of pilgrimages that had close associations with anti-Communist political themes, such as those at Fatima and Medjugorje. John Paul II was in part able to promote pilgrimage so extensively because of the global media networks that paid attention to his travels and that enabled him, more than any previous Pontiff, to bring his messages and travels to global audiences. Alongside his use of modern media, he also made great use of canonisation policies, which were also heavily promoted and reported in the global media, to enhance the status of Catholic pilgrimage sites. The case of Padre Pio (1887e1968), the Capuchin priest from Southern Italy who manifested the stigmata of Jesus and who became the focus of much popular devotion in his lifetime, is significant here. His monastic residence at San Giovanni di Rotondo developed into a popular

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See http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/rib.html#ECC2005, citing the Christian Research English Church Census, 2005, indicates that Sunday attendance at Roman Catholic churches in England declined by 49% between 1989 and 2005. While according to McAllister (2006, p. 3), similar decline is evident in Catholic Church attendance in Northern Ireland. Other evidence of institutional Catholic decline may be found at http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/030616/story.html, which cites surveys indicating a Catholic decline of over 33% in church attendance between 1978 and 2003. For an overview on those issues, including an assessment of the correlation between declining Catholic Church attendance and declining birth rates in Europe, see Berman et al., 2005.

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pilgrimage centre. Padre Pio had faced opposition from the Catholic hierarchy, which discouraged persons from making pilgrimages to San Giovanni Rotondo and sought to stifle his charismatic appeal, seeing him as a threat to the authority of the Church (see McKevitt, 1991). John Paul II, who had met Padre Pio when he (John Paul) was a young priest in 1947, reversed this trend, instead promoting Padre Pio’s virtues, using his influence to push forward the process of canonisation, encouraging pilgrimages in his honour, and announcing that making a pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo would have all one’s sins removed. In 2002, he further affirmed Padre Pio’s miracle-working capacities and declared him to be a saint. Pilgrim numbers to San Giovanni have increased with the elevated status of its holy figure. Most recent estimates indicate that around 7.5 million pilgrims visit his site each year, making it one of the most visited pilgrimage locations in the world. The occasion of Padre Pio’s beatification in Rome by John Paul II drew what at the time was the largest gathering of pilgrims that Rome had witnessed.11 Even in his declining years John Paul II continued to promote pilgrimage as a key activity, well aware that the mass media would publicise these activities. In summer 2004, for instance, he made what was to be a final personal pilgrimage to Lourdes to pray for his own health, affirming Mary as a figure of healing and thereby providing an example for others in his pilgrimage to this site. While the promotion of such pilgrimage sites by John Paul II and Buddhist temple authorities in Japan as a means of enhancing faith is by no means a new phenomenon, it has been striking in modern times because it seems to provide a contrast to the general problems that established traditions such as Catholicism in Europe and Buddhism in Japan have had. While affiliation with organised religions appears to be in decline, persons have flocked to the pilgrimage sites of those traditions. Although this trend may be in part because ecclesiastical authorities have encouraged pilgrimage, it is also because pilgrimage offers persons a way of engaging with faith on a personal level, without needing to take on the enduring levels of commitment to religious organisations. I shall return to this issue.

The individual in search of meaning: pilgrimage, personal quest and miracle in the modern world Persons today are undertaking pilgrimages not just because pilgrimage has become more accessible, or because it helps them deal with their identity, or because of the encouragement of religious authorities. Another, crucial reason is that pilgrimage still provides for pilgrims with what it has always provided: new avenues for finding meaning in life, the possibility of encountering the spiritual and the miraculous on a personal level. These traditional opportunities have taken on a special resonance in an age in which modernity and rationalisation appear to be limiting individual expression, denying the possibility of the miraculous, and transforming the world into a rationalised environment centred on economic purpose. Modern technological advances appear to have done little to quell individual unease at the state of the world. In many respects they have created the conditions in which persons wish to search for alternative modes of being

11

See The Guardian, 30 September 2002 (G2 section, pp. 12e3) on the canonisation of Padre Pio and of the rise in pilgrim numbers at San Giovanni. See also http://www.zenit.org/english/archive/9905/ZE990502.html on the crowds at his beatification.

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and for ways of escaping, even if temporarily, from the insecurities of the economically focused orientations of the modern world. At the same time one key impact of the rise of modernity and of the secular values associated with it has been to detach people from, or loosen any sense of obligation they might have felt towards, the organised and established religious traditions that in earlier eras provided the dominant framework within which people sought solace and meaning. One can suggest that these two factors together (the seemingly increasing wish to find spiritual alternatives and meaning, and to escape from an increasingly rationalised society, coupled with a general detachment or turning away from existing religious traditions) have facilitated the growth of alternative spiritual movements (see, for example, Heelas and Woodhead 2005), and I would argue that they are also evident in the rising numbers of those who participate in pilgrimages such as Shikoku and Santiago de Compostela. While those in Shikoku may have a multiplicity of motivationsdas outlined earlier in this articledone theme that has been recurrent among those I have interviewed has been a deep and growing sense of insecurity in the modern world and a feeling that modern ‘rationalised’ society has either failed to provide answers to personal questions or to problems, or that the benefits of modern society have only touched on superficial aspects of human life but have failed to deal with inner questions, worries and concerns. Yet, as a rule, those I interviewed also felt detached from the religious traditions, such as Buddhism, that had traditionally provided the spiritual framework through which Japanese people have sought to counter their unease.12 Pilgrims’ motivations are often centred less on faith or on the organised religious tradition with which the pilgrimage they undertake is associated than on attempts to find meaning and a way to deal with personal problems. This theme came out in numerous interviews I had with pilgrims on foot in Shikoku during the late 1990s and the beginning of this century. Many of those I met were middle-aged men who told me that they had lost their jobs as a result of Japan’s economic down, a term that can also be used to refer to those turn and because of ‘restructuring’ (risutora who were thrown out of work by restructuring). Many felt estranged from society and suffered a loss of personal esteem, often also causing severe problems in their family lives from which they felt impelled to escape. But they could not find any solace in the organised religious traditions of Japan. Caught between personal loss of meaning and a lack of interest in organised religious structures, they had become interested in the pilgrimage as a form of alternative therapy. Several of those I spoke to knew of accounts written by others in similar situations, who had turned to the pilgrimage because it offered a means of ‘finding themselves’. As one pilgrim told me, he had worked for around thirty years for his company and felt that his personal identity was tied up with his company. When, through restructuring, he lost his job, he felt betrayed by the company and by the Japanese system in general. He also felt a severe loss of personal esteem and began to question who he was. Determined not to just sit unhappily at home, he took up the ‘challenge’ of walking the pilgrimage in order to ‘find himself’. Through losing his job, he had come to realise the materialistic life he had lived and the system to which he had devoted himself were empty and uncaring. He was now keen to find some deeper meaning. 12

In addition, other modes of religious expression that have often been used as a means of spiritual development, such as the new religions of Japan, have been less popular in the past decade or so, since the 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway by the Japanese new religion Aum Shinrikyoˆ. That attack has had a massive impact on the image of new religions in Japan.

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This person made no reference to religious faith. Like many other pilgrims I have met in recent , which literally transyears, he emphasised that he was not religious (using the term mushuˆkyoˆ lates as ‘no religion’). That refrain is found commonly in the published accounts of pilgrims in the modern day, many of whom appear keen to emphasise that they are not religious and that they are ‘mushuˆkyoˆ’, even as they speak of the personal growth they feel from the pilgrimage (see Nishikawa, 1999, p. 12). It is not, of course, just middle-aged, unemployed men who walk the pilgrimage, although they are a growing presence on the route. In my recent visits to Shikoku, I met persons of all ages, from students and recent graduates to unemployed middle-aged to the retired, who were walking the pilgrimage. Yet no matter what their age or their gender, they tended to repeat the refrain of the man : they were on journeys of self-discovery, in which the challenge posed by the pilgrimage because of its arduous 1400 kilometre journey on foot, was central to their purpose. Common, too, was the feeling that ‘religion’, by which they meant organised traditions such as Buddhism, which remains the most prevalent tradition in Japan, was of no use to them now, even as they set off on foot along a pilgrimage way that led them to eighty-eight Buddhist temples. The Japanese scholar Hoshino Eiki has conducted extensive interviews with pilgrims in Shikoku in recent decades and has gotten similar responses. From the interviews that he has carried out, Hoshino argues that self-discovery, personal development and challenge have become the dominant motivations of contemporary Shikoku pilgrims, and not any attachment to the Buddhist faith, as traditionally associated with pilgrimage. He further suggests that these individualised goals attained through personal experience constitute evidence of a form of ‘New Age’ thought among contemporary Japanese pilgrims in recent times (see Hoshino, 2001, pp. 361e5, 384e5). One can discern similar patterns to those observed among Japanese pilgrims in Shikoku by both Hoshino and me, among the growing numbers of walkers from across Europe and beyond on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage. Many of them, as Frey has shown, are often driven personal growth, modern therapies and ‘New Age’ ideas. Many, too, have been influenced by the writings of New Age proponents such as Shirley Maclaine and Paulo Coelho, who have written accounts of the pilgrimage in the context of journeys of self-discovery (see Frey, 1998, pp. 34e 5, 137e8). Paul Basu has also drawn attention to the New Age themes in contemporary Western pilgrimage contexts, and of the tendency of many pilgrims to carry with them what he calls New Age ‘personal growth’ manuals (see Basu, 2004, p. 170). I had a personal indication of the issues highlighted by Frey when one of my students wrote to me after have finishing her degree at Lancaster University, where I taught at the time, to tell me she had just arrived at Santiago after having walked the pilgrimage. She did so, she wrote, not because she was religiousdshe was an atheistdbut because she wanted to find out about herself before taking a job in the modern world. She had taken my course on pilgrimage, in which I had mentioned this tendency to treat pilgrimages as a means of engaging in some levels of austerity that would test one while enabling one to make a break from everyday routines. This notion had appealed to her, leading her to become a pilgrim on the Santiago Camino, making a journey of self-discovery, even as she emphasised her atheism. The spread of ‘New Age’ ideas among pilgrims has clearly affected pilgrimages such as Santiago and Shikoku. It has also helped in the formation of modern pilgrimage centres that serve as centres of ‘spiritual magnetism’ (see Preston, 1992) for adherents of the ‘New Age’. Glastonbury and

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Sedona are appropriated sites that were important pilgrimage centres in earlier eras for older traditionsdSedona for native Indian traditions and Glastonbury for Christianity, especially in the Middle Ages. Both have been overlaid in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by New Age ideas. Glastonbury has been identified by New Age proponents as a centre of spiritual power because of legends associating it with Celtic culture, with King Arthur, with mystical traditions, with the belief that it is at the epicentre of a sacred geometry of ley lines (pathways that link places of spiritual energy together) and of holy places throughout the British Isles, and with the belief associating the place with pre-modern goddess cults (see Ivakhiv, 2001, pp. 105e16; Bowman, 1993). Many New Age devotees have chosen to live there and to establish New Age teaching centres. Sedona in Arizona has been identified by American New Age practitioners as a place of power, a ‘vortex’ or power spot at which the living spiritual presence of the earth (Gaia) is manifest and at which numerous spiritual energy sources converge and at which numerous miraculous events occur. As Adrian Ivakhiv has shown, the area has become a centre for New Age bookshops, healing centres, guided ‘vortex tours’ of supposed power spots in the area, stories of visitations by extraterrestrials and UFOs, and even the creation of a series of sacred monuments that supposedly represent the most sacred locations in Sedona. They have become the focus of pilgrimage tours in the region (see Ivakhiv, 2001, pp. 173e6). The development of ‘New Age’ pilgrimage centres, along with the appearance of pilgrimage sites such as Our Lady of Clearwater, and the growing numbers of pilgrims on traditional routes such as Santiago and Shikoku who see in these pilgrimages avenues for personal self-development, are all indicative of the degree to which modern pilgrimage has become a practice unconnected to organised religions. This trend is evident, too, in the emergence of modern day pilgrimages such as Graceland and the annual ‘Run to the Wall’ motorbike ride across the USA from California to Washington, DC, by Vietnam Veterans. That ride culminates in visit to the Vietnam Memorial Wall, where veterans pay homage to fallen comrades. Participants in the ‘Ride’ regard their cross-country motorbike journey as a ‘pilgrimage’ through which they are able to connect themselves with America. Moreover, the ‘pilgrimage’ has a sacred destinationdthe Wall in Washingtond and is suffused with notions of an individual search for healing, especially of the emotional wounds caused by the Vietnam War along with the creation of a collective narrative pertinent to all participants, and has become an annual event of significance not only for participants but for those along the route they travel (see Dubisch, 2004). As such, it is further evidence of a very modern form of pilgrimage that has much in common with more traditional forms of pilgrimage but without connections to organised religious structures or traditions.

Autonomy, modernity and the decline of religion? Central to much of the growth of pilgrimages in modern times is a focus on personal autonomy. While many of the factors I have noted are expansions of recurrent themes in pilgrimage, the emphasis on personal autonomy, separate from any religious affiliations, is rarely, if ever, found in earlier times. Pilgrims in earlier eras felt unable to state, as so many contemporary Shikoku pilgrims now do, that they had no faith, no religion and no association with Buddhism. Until the nineteenth century, pilgrims in Japan required permits to travel to pilgrimages and therefore had officially to place their journeys in a religious guise. These constraints do not exist today.

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Framed in terms that may even deny religiondas with the Japanese pilgrims who ardently proclaim they have ‘no religion’dautonomy is a product of the modern day. It also indicates how much of a ‘modern’ phenomenon pilgrimage may bedagain, an important point to emphasise, given that much academic writing about pilgrimage treats it as essentially an anti-modern phenomenon associated with pre-modern social structures (see Turner and Turner, 1978, p. 203). Yet as the examples I have provided show, pilgrimages may both be facilitated by modern circumstances and flourish readily within modern contexts. Juan Campo (1998) has produced an interesting discussion of pilgrimage in contemporary American culture. He argues that American culture is deeply linked to the processes of movement, starting from Columbus and then the Pilgrim Fathers who came to the USA from Britain in the seventeenth century, and leading to the westward movement of the population in subsequent centuries. He also notes more explicitly religious narratives such as the westward trek of the Mormons in the nineteenth century in search of a new beginning and a sacred centreda trek that culminated in their development of Salt Lake City, Utah, as a religious centre for the faith. Campo emphasises not only that movement has been endemic to American culture but that American identity has been tied to concepts of movement and search. In so doing, he points to a number of important places in the American landscape that serve as pilgrimage locations, often of a secularised nature, in the modern day, including Disneyland, Graceland and Mount Rushmore. As Campo notes, too, most sacred sites in the USA, apart from Native Indian ones, are relatively modern, dating largely from the twentieth century. Moreover, they are also linked to the processes of modernity because they have been made accessible through the development of modern roads and because they are linked to the processes of movement that are intrinsic to the USA as a modern society (see Campo, 1998, esp. pp. 41e2). Philip Taylor (2004), too, has indicated how closely linked to the processes of modernity can be in his study of the growing popularity of pilgrimage in Vietnam, notably to the thriving pilgrimage centre of Our Lady of the Realm, a shrine near the Cambodian border that now attracts around one million pilgrims per year (see Taylor, 2004, pp. 1e2). As Taylor indicates, the growing popularity of these pilgrimages in Vietnam is closely tied to a host of modern conditions such as ‘the deepening and extension of marketing relations in the country’ (Taylor, 2004, p. 84) and the emergence of a liberal and increasingly capitalist economy and of an increasingly modern transport (see Taylor, 2004, pp. 114e8), alongside growing media representations, through pamphlets and books, of popular pilgrimage shrines, through which their images are projected to wider audiences. In this growing nexus of expanding economic and market relations, which have brought the consumerist frameworks of the city to the rural surrounds of thriving shrines such as Our Lady of the Realm, pilgrimage at rural Vietnamese sites has assumed a modern face as a microcosm of urban society, in which consumption becomes a key theme (see Taylor, 2004, pp. 164, 186). Campo and Taylor thus indicate, in different ways, how very ‘modern’ pilgrimage can be. While one can see recurring elements of the anti-modern in contemporary pilgrimagedfor example, in the motives of pilgrims who step outside the normal restraints of society to seek miracles and meanings that provide a counter-balance to the demands of modernity and rationalisationdone must also recognise that the very activities they engage in to counter these forcesdtravelling, moving, seeking out places away from their homedare part of modernity. Contemporary pilgrimage may be seen as a facet of modernity, which emphasises individual autonomy and self-development.

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Pilgrimages, whether along old routes such as Santiago and Shikoku, or to newly appropriated centres such as Glastonbury or Sedona, provide a means of acquiring direct spiritual experience for the self in the modern world. These themes were certainly evident in pilgrimage in previous times, but in the modern day they have been prevalent and have become detached from even tenuous links to religious affiliation. The assumption that just because pilgrimage numbers around the world are growing, a ‘religious revival’ in a traditional sense is underway is therefore unwarranted. Of course, not all who undertake pilgrimages these days do so without religious commitment. Many who travel along the way of St James or along the henro michi in Shikoku are devotees who would declare themselves to be Catholics or Buddhists. An interest in Hindu messages, founded in geopolitical considerations, may similarly be a significant factor in the growth of pilgrim numbers in India. Still, this growth does not mean a resurgence of interest in Catholic, Buddhist or Hindu traditions. Religious authorities may have been successful in using pilgrimages as a means of encouraging persons to visit sites associated with their faiths, but as the example of the Catholic Church suggests, these activities have not arrested the general decline of church attendance and adherence. Indeed, one might suggest almost the contrary. One of the appeals of pilgrimage is that it provides a means through which persons can engage in spiritual practices that help them deal with the modern world and find meaning in their lives without having to be committed to organised religious traditions. That point is evident in the ‘New Age’ orientations of growing numbers of pilgrims in Shikoku and Santiago. In an age of uncertainty, in which many persons have questioned the role of organised religious traditions in the same way that they have questioned other social institutions, and have become as alienated from them as much as they have from the ethos of the modern, scientific-rationalist world, pilgrimage may have flourished not so much because of its associations with organised religious traditions as because of its capacity to provide a way of dealing with individual needs without commitment to organised traditions and even with the rejection of religion as an organised entity.

Conclusion In conclusion, I suggest that it is wrong to see the growth in pilgrim numbers as a universal manifestation of a revival of religious sentiments, or as a sign that as the decline of established religions are being reversed. Rather, I suggest that pilgrimage growth may be evidence of something more closely associated with the patterns of change suggested by Heelas and Woodhead (2005) in their study of the English town of Kendal. They point to a ‘spiritual revolution’, in which the decline of the established churches was accompanied not so much by increasing secularisation as by a turn away from traditions towards a more autonomous, individualised and personalised spirituality. Similarly, the growing numbers of modern pilgrims who are visiting the sacred centres of religious traditions can similarly be seen as indications of this move away from religious affiliation and commitment and towards personalised spiritual search. Of course pilgrimage has always offered a highly individualised scope for self-expression and religious search, as well as for escape from the restrictions of everyday social bonds and contexts, but in earlier eras it was commonly located within the frameworks of religious traditions. What is new is that, even while utilising the

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frameworks provided by traditional routes, pilgrims find it wholly reasonable to describe themselves as having no link to those traditions and to present their journeys solely in the context of a personalised and individualised framework of search and self-development. They may, as appears to be the case among many modern Santiago and Shikoku pilgrims, appropriate the frameworks provided by traditional pilgrimage structures for such purposes, or they may, as is evident in a variety of modern pilgrimages from Sedona to the Vietnam Wall, engage in the development of new or appropriated autonomous sites that are from the outset detached from any organised religious traditions and presupposed meanings. When growing numbers of pilgrims to Santiago and Shikoku can articulate their journeys in terms of New Age ideas and can engage in pilgrimages without feeling any need to engage with the religious traditions that have long been associated with them, and when new modes of pilgrimage distinctly separate from past traditions emerge to attract the attention of practitioners, one can see how pilgrimage may not only be highly modern in nature but also pose new challenges to organised religions in the twenty-first century. References Agence Press France, 2004. Amarnath Pilgrimage Draws Record Numbers. Available from: http://www.hvk.org/ articles/0804/46.html (accessed 06.11.06). Basu, P., 2004. Route metaphors of ‘roots-tourism’ in the Scottish Highland diaspora. In: Coleman, S., Eade, J. (Eds.), Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion. Routledge, London, pp. 150e174. Beaman, L., 2006. Labyrinth as heterotopia: the pilgrim’s creation of space. In: Swatos, Jr., W.H. (Ed.), On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity. Brill, Leiden, pp. 83e104. Berman, E., et al., 2005. From Empty Pews to Empty Cradles: Fertility Decline among European Catholics. Available from: www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/private/ierc/Empty_Pews.pdf (accessed 16.11.06). Bowman, M., 1993. Drawn to Glastonbruy. In: Reader, I., Walter, T. (Eds.), Pilgrimage in Popular Culture. Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 29e62. Campo, J., 1998. American pilgrimage landscapes. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 558, 40e56. Covell, S.G., 2005. Japanese Temple Buddhism: Worldliness in a Religion of Renunciation. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. Dahlberg, A., 1991. The body as a principle of holism: three pilgrimages to Lourdes. In: Eade, J., Sallnow, M. (Eds.), Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. Routledge, London, pp. 30e50. Dubisch, J., 1995. In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Practice at a Greek Shrine. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Dubisch, J., 2004. Heartland of America: memory, motion and the (re)construction of history on a motorcycle pilgrimage. In: Coleman, S., Eade, J. (Eds.), Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion. Routledge, London, pp. 105e132. Feldhaus, A., 2003. Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage, and Geographical Imagination in India. Palgrave, Basingstoke. Foard, J., 1981. The boundaries of compassion: Buddhism and national tradition in Japanese pilgrimage. Journal of Asian Studies 16, 231e251. Frey, N., 1998. Pilgrim stories on and off the Road to Santiago: Journeys Along an Ancient Way in Modern Spain. University of California Press, Berkeley. Fuller, C.J., 1992. The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Gilmore, L., 2006. Desert pilgrimage: liminality, transformation, and the other at the Burning Man festival. In: Swatos, Jr., W.H. (Ed.), On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity. Brill, Leiden, pp. 125e158.

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Web site references, with most recently accessed date http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa022701.htm (accessed 16.11.06). http://medjugorje.hr.nt4.ims.hr/News.aspx (accessed 06.11.06). http://usuarios.lycos.es/ViaEuropaea/ingles/index.htm (accessed 08.11.06). http://www.ark.ac.uk/publications/updates/update41.pdf (accessed 16.11.06). http://www.csj.org.uk/present.htm (accessed 06.11.06). http://www.gaga.ne.jp/road88 (accessed 08.11.06). http://www.geocities.com/friends_usa_santiago (accessed 08.11.06). http://www.kushima.com/henro (accessed 01.02.07). http://www.kushima.com/henro/books (accessed 01.02.07). http://www.kushima.com/henro/links/links_walking.htm (accessed 01.02.07). http://www.medjugorje.org (accessed 06.11.06). http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/030616/story.html (accessed 16.11.06). http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/rib.html#ECC2005 (accessed 16.11.06). http://www.zenit.org/english/archive/9905/ZE990502.html (accessed 02.02.07). Ian Reader is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester. Previously he held positions at Lancaster University, as a Visiting Professor at the University of Hawaii, and at academic positions in Japan, Scotland and Denmark. He did his PhD on Buddhism in Japan at the University of Leeds in 1983, and is author of several books, the most recent being Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku (University of Hawaii Press, 2005) and Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo (Curzon and University of Hawaii Press, 2000).