Attitudes, practices, schedules, and triggers

This chapter discusses a detailed questionnaire study we carried out. The average number of circuits for respondents was over 120 times. Some have been doing the pilgrimage for sixty years and claim several hundred circuits. It discusses their motives, faith, and practices, and examines their economic circumstances, their attitudes towards other pilgrims, and issues of competition. They also commonly do other pilgrimages, often many times, and this suggests that pilgrimage in general (not just Shikoku) is their core life practice. The chapter also discusses schedules, speed, and how these relate to multiple performance, provides examples of people (commonly older men who have lost their spouses) who spend 300 days or more a year on the road as pilgrims, even into their eighties and nineties, and explores the idea of ‘triggers’ that lead people to become incessant pilgrims.