41st Station of the Shin-Shikoku Sōma Pilgrimage Route

Good to know

• Place of worship
• 10 kmfrom Abiko center
• Abiko

A Shikoku pilgrimage, rebuilt on the Tone River

The Shin-Shikoku Sōma Pilgrimage — in Japanese, Shin-Shikoku Sōma Reijō Hachijūhak-kasho — takes its name from the old Sōma district of Shimōsa Province, the land on both sides of the lower Tone River that is now Abiko and Kashiwa in Chiba and Toride in Ibaraki. Tradition credits its founding to Kankyō Kōon Zenji, a monk of Chōzen-ji, the No. 1 and No. 88 station of the circuit at Toride. Born in Shinano Province in 1711, he worked as a cloth merchant in Edo, set up shop in Toride as the trader Iseyā Genroku, then took holy orders; around 1759–1760 he began laying out a replica of Shikoku's 88 sites, reportedly bringing back sand from the Yoshino River pilgrimage route and burying it at the chosen temples and halls along the Tone.↗↗↗

Work on the circuit continued into the 1770s. Standing stones carved with An'ei-era dates (1772 onward) survive at more than fifty stations, which suggests the line-up was essentially complete by then; the route appears even in a period gazetteer of the Tone River, so it was well known in its own time. Today 58 stations sit in Toride, 26 more plus one extra-holiday site in Abiko, and four in Kashiwa. Some are substantial temples; many are tiny halls, shrines, or a single stone beside a village meeting hall, and a few of the original temples have been lost entirely.

What you find at No. 41

Station forty-one is the Fusashita Shinden Inari Shrine, a small Inari shrine of the kind that sits at the edge of almost every Japanese neighbourhood, reached down a quiet lane in the Fusashita Shinden part of Abiko's Fusa district. The pilgrim's focus is set slightly apart: the Daishi hall dedicated to Kōbō Daishi stands behind the Inari shrine, and the station's marker identifies the spot to anyone walking or cycling the circuit in order.↗↗

Every station on this route corresponds to one of the Shikoku 88, and No. 41's counterpart is Ryūkō-ji, a temple on Mount Inari. The logic of the copy is made plain in the pilgrim hymn (goeika) assigned here, which speaks of the deity as one who vows to guard the esoteric teaching as it spreads through three lands — an Inari shrine doing duty as a Shingon temple, and taking to the role.↗

Visually it is modest: expect shrine grounds rather than temple architecture, a hall for the大师 figure among the trees behind it, and the quiet signs of upkeep — swept ground, flowers, small offerings. On the Sōma circuit that care is the norm rather than the exception; two centuries and a quarter after the founding, the faithful of these villages still look after the Daishi halls.

Putting the station in a day's route

No. 41 sits in the middle of a compact cluster of stations around Fusa and the Abiko side of the Tone. Just before it comes No. 40, held at a village hall in Ina across the river in Toride, and just after it come No. 42 Daikō-ji and No. 43 Enju-in on the Abiko station side of town. The Fusa district also holds Nos. 21 and 37 (Katsura-in), No. 24 Enmei-ji, No. 58's Kannon hall and the extra No. 89 Asama shrine, so a single loop can tick off a good run of numbers.↗↗

The classic way to string them together is a riverside ride: out along the Tone River embankment paths, over the bridge at Sakae into Fusa for No. 41, then up the old road towards Lake Tega, whose shore cycling path leads to Abiko for the next stations. Pilgrims who have done the circuit note the pleasant extras along that stretch — the wide grassy riverbanks, a preserved farmhouse with a main building dating to 1860, waterfowl on the lake.↗

Bicycles suit this route unusually well. The country between the river and the lake is flat, the station list reads like a map of old village names — Fusa, Okahatto, Shinki, Kōyanaka, Komoma, Ina — and the final page of a guidebook is really a long list of small shrines, Kannon halls and stone monuments that only make sense when you are moving between them. Local history enthusiasts also treat the circuit as a way of reading the landscape: traces of the old "Daishi roads" still survive in a few places, even though most have been absorbed into paved streets or erased by development.

How to visit

Approach No. 41 as a guest at someone's neighbourhood shrine rather than as a sightseer. Bow at the entrance, pray quietly in front of the Inari hall and then at the Daishi hall behind it, and take care with anything that looks like an offering left by a local family. If you are keeping a stamp book or following the circuit in order, this station is simply forty-one in a run of eighty-eight — a satisfying checkpoint rather than a destination.↗

Plan transport around the fact that the station has no parking of its own. Those who make a practice of touring the Sōma sites recommend a small car for the whole circuit, because several stations sit down narrow lanes, and a bicycle is often the easier answer for a cluster like this one. Pull up considerately, leave the way clear for residents, and don't block the lane.↗

The grounds are open in the way ordinary shrines are: there is no admission fee and no set opening schedule to plan around, though late afternoon light over the fields is prettier than midday. Daytime is the sensible choice if you intend to keep going to the next stations, and it gives you time to stop for lunch in Abiko afterwards.

Why bother with a copy

Miniature pilgrimages like this one exist all over eastern Japan, and they answer to the same impulse as the original: the desire to walk a complete circuit of 88 sacred sites without the months and the mountain roads it demands in Shikoku. The Sōma version has kept its local character rather than becoming an attraction. Some stations have vanished and been taken over by a village hall or a神社 compound; a few have been rebuilt grandly; No. 41 is the humblest kind of all — a shrine at the back of a field, doing a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old job it was chosen for.↗↗

For a visitor, the appeal is exactly that ordinariness. Read the marker stone, look at the hymn, understand which temple in Ehime or Kōchi this quiet corner of Chiba is standing in for, and then get back on the bike and chase the next number — which is, after all, how the pilgrims who founded it intended the route to be used.↗