四国八十八ヶ所霊場 (Shikoku hachijuhachi-kasho reijo) means "the 88 sacred places of Shikoku", and nobody voted on them: the temples' own story is that Kukai chose them. Born in 774 at Byobugaura, today's Zentsuji City and the site of temple No. 75, he entered the court university at 18, left it against everyone's advice, and trained in the mountains and on the coast of his home island, at Mt Ishizuchi, on Tairyu-ji's mountain (No. 21) and at Cape Muroto (No. 24), as he wrote in his early book Sango Shiiki. He studied esoteric Buddhism in Chang'an under Huiguo at the Qinglong-si, the temple No. 36 is named after, founded Shingon on his return, and entered his final meditation on Koyasan in 835, aged 62; the court gave him the title Kobo Daishi in 921. Ryozen-ji (No. 1) dates the circuit itself to 815, when Kukai, it says, went round Shikoku clockwise from the northeast and held a 37-day rite there to cleanse the 88 worldly desires, the meaning the temple gives to the number. The keeper today is the Shikoku 88 Sacred Sites Association (一般社団法人 四国八十八ヶ所霊場会), which the 88 temples form among themselves: active since 1958, incorporated on June 1, 2017, and run from an office behind the shop in Zentsu-ji's car park. The 88 are not all Shingon: 80 are, but Fujii-dera (No. 11) and Sekkei-ji (No. 33) are Rinzai Zen, Kokubun-ji (No. 15) is Soto Zen, four are Tendai, and Gosho-ji (No. 78) belongs to the Ji sect.
Monks came to Shikoku to train long before anyone numbered the temples. The association says the island used to be called 四国辺地 (Shikoku henchi, "the remote edges"), and that in the Edo period, when ordinary people began to come for faith and for the sights, henchi became henro. The route as it is walked today took shape in 1687, when Shinnen, a lay monk who went round more than 20 times, published his guidebook 四國邊路道指南 (Shikoku henro michishirube): the Japan Tourism Agency's history of the pilgrimage calls it the first book to set out the 88 as one route with a number for each temple, and Shinnen went on to raise about 200 stone signposts, one of which still stands at Enmei-ji (No. 54). Most of his temples are still the 88, but the Meiji separation of shrines and temples moved several stamps: in the Edo period pilgrims took the No. 13 stamp at Ichinomiya Shrine, the Kotohiki Hachiman shrine's temple came down the hill to share Kannon-ji's grounds as No. 68, and two temples both gave out the No. 30 stamp until January 1, 1994, when it settled at Zenraku-ji. The paper trail is on the route too: a 1347 graffito by a traveller from Hitachi on Kannon-ji's main hall (No. 69); the oldest intact pilgrim's slip, a copper plate of 1650 at Enmyo-ji (No. 53) that is also the first known use of the word henro; the oldest printed henro map, of 1763, at Sairin-ji (No. 48); and at Hoju-ji (No. 62), a signpost Nakatsukasa Mohei set up on his 254th circuit.
The founding legend the association tells is Emon Saburo's. A rich, grasping farmer in Heian-era Iyo, he turned a begging monk away for seven days running, then knocked the bowl from his hands and broke it in eight; his eight children died, one a year, Kukai appeared at his pillow, and Saburo, knowing at last whom he had struck, walked the island 20 times looking for him. Then he went round the other way, hoping to meet him, and collapsed near Shosan-ji (No. 12), where Kukai came to him as he died and wrote "Emon Saburo reborn" on a stone for his left hand. Ishite-ji (No. 51) keeps that stone, found, the temple says, in the fist of a boy born in 892. The year Saburo died was a leap year, the association adds, hence the tradition that going round backwards (gyaku-uchi, 88 to 1) in a leap year brings you face to face with Kukai; the next one is 2028. Most guidebooks and signposts run clockwise, from 1 to 88 (jun-uchi), but the association leaves the order to you, and the Japan Heritage text names the other ways: in sections (kugiri-uchi), one province at a time (ikkoku-mairi), or in no order at all (midare-uchi). The four old provinces are four stages of the path: Awa (Tokushima) is the dojo of awakening the mind (発心の道場), Tosa (Kochi) of ascetic practice (修行の道場), Iyo (Ehime) of enlightenment (菩提の道場) and Sanuki (Kagawa) of nirvana (涅槃の道場). One temple crosses the line: Unpen-ji (No. 66), the highest of the 88 at 911 m, has a Tokushima address, but it is the first Sanuki temple, a "checkpoint temple" in the association's words, so it counts with Kagawa.
On the road you dress for it, or at least half: the association sets no dress code, but white is the basic dress, and those who skip the full outfit wear a white hakue jacket printed with Kukai's mantra, Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo, over ordinary clothes, with a wagesa stole, prayer beads and the stamp book, plus a sedge hat and the kongo-zue staff. The hat carries the words 同行二人, dogyo ninin, "two travelling together": the staff stands for Kukai himself, so however big your group, each pilgrim walks as a pair with him. Pilgrims do not tap the staff on bridges, after the story of a night Kukai spent under one that felt to him like ten. At each temple you pray at the main hall and then the Daishi hall, leave an osame-fuda name slip at each, and only then take the nokyo; the slips change colour as the circuits mount up, white for the first four, then green, red, silver from the 25th, gold from the 50th and brocade from the 100th. Along the way people offer osettai: fruit, drinks, directions, sometimes a free bed (zenkon-yado) or a bath. Shikoku has long held, the association says, that whoever gives osettai shares the pilgrim's merit without walking a step, and the pilgrim says thank you with a name slip. More than a dozen temples run lodgings (shukubo), from Anraku-ji's (No. 6), with a hot-spring bath and room for 300, to Zentsu-ji's Iroha Kaikan; the association's rule for all of them is to book ahead.
The circuit closes at Okubo-ji (No. 88), the temple of kechigan, completion, where, by the temple's history, Kukai laid up a ringed staff his teacher Huiguo had given him, one that had come from India by way of China. Finishers leave their own staffs here, to be offered up in the outdoor fire rite the temple holds each spring and summer. If you have time, the association invites you to go on to Koyasan in Wakayama to tell Kukai you have finished, though it is not required. At Okunoin the path runs about 2 km from the Ichinohashi bridge, past more than 200,000 graves under ancient cedars, to the mausoleum where, in Koyasan's faith, Kukai has remained in meditation since 835; Koyasan marks the 1,200th year in 2034. The other thank-you visit the association suggests is simply to walk Shikoku again.
Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs named the pilgrimage a Japan Heritage story on April 24, 2015, among the first 18, under the title 「四国遍路」～回遊型巡礼路と独自の巡礼文化～ ("Shikoku Henro: a circular pilgrimage route and its own pilgrim culture"), shared by 57 cities, towns and villages; its text sets the loop, with no final destination, against the out-and-back pilgrimages of Christianity and Islam. Stretches of the old path are national historic sites, among them the trail up to Kakurin-ji (No. 20), protected since 1998. UNESCO is the open question. After a national review in 2008, the pilgrimage was placed in category Ia among the candidates not yet on Japan's tentative list; a council of the four prefectures and their towns, universities, the temples' association and Shikoku's business federation was set up to push for listing on March 16, 2010; it renamed the proposed property simply 四国遍路 (Shikoku Henro) in fiscal 2019, and the prefectures are still asking the national government to put it on the tentative list. A few of the temples turn up on our other lists as well: the bell and pilgrims' hand bells of Okubo-ji are among the 100 Soundscapes of Japan, the Jo-no-Fuchi spring near Sairin-ji is one of the 100 Remarkable Waters, and two places on the route are among the 100 Best Sunsets: Yashima (No. 84) and Kotohiki Park, where Nos. 68 and 69 stand.