Ian Reader is a professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Upon obtaining his PhD on Japanese Buddhism in 1983, he moved to Japan and traveled extensively around the country. In 1984 he made the nine-hundred-mile Shikoku pilgrimage in forty days. After that he served in academic posts at universities in the United States and Europe. He is continuing his research on the study of religion, with a particular focus on Japan.
摘要
Until the twentieth century, the only way to do the pilgrimage was by foot, but as Japan modernized and developed increasingly efficient transport systems, the options for pilgrims broadened. There is no stipulated rule that says that pilgrims should walk, and Shikoku pilgrims have always made use of whatever means could enable them to make the pilgrimage in the ways they wished.
