History & The Arts
Hajj 2015: Balancing pilgrimage with consumerism
...opening, in 1866, of a railway connecting Lourdes to Paris that made the once-remote town accessible to the general populace. The Shikoku pilgrimage, a 900-mile journey around Japan’s fourth island to 88 Buddhist temples, was initially an ascetic journey embarked on mainly by young men. By the late 1940s, it had almost died out, but it was revived and transformed in the...