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Article Dans Une Revue Traditiones Année : 2017

The Senses, the Path and the Bus: a Sensory Ethnography of the Saigoku Pilgrimage

Paolo Barbaro

Résumé

The paper seeks to describe and analyze the experiences of the contemporary pilgrims of Saigoku, from the point of view of their senses. The Saigoku route is one of the most ancient and popular Japanese pilgrimages. To complete it, pilgrims have to visit, in a set order, 33 temples situated in various locations of the Kansai region in Japan. There is no set route to go from one temple to another, and pilgrims take various roads and use various means of transportation to complete the circuit. The total length of the pilgrimage is over 1'000 kilometers. The different routes are not just physically different: they can also be interpreted as different approaches to places, which correspond to patterned clusters of sensory phenomena, and which can generate very diverse experiences of the pilgrimage. In fact, from the planning of the pilgrimage onwards, the pilgrims are continuously confronted with choices regarding the use of their bodies. They often are the architects of the experiential process. General choices such as the amount of walking they will do, the road to take, the kind of food to eat, and what to wear shape the pilgrimage experience in very different ways.

Dates et versions

hal-03607963 , version 1 (14-03-2022)

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Citer

Paolo Barbaro. The Senses, the Path and the Bus: a Sensory Ethnography of the Saigoku Pilgrimage. Traditiones, 2017, 36 (1), pp.87-111. ⟨10.3986/Traditio2007360107⟩. ⟨hal-03607963⟩

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