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This week, I'm going to recommend The Pilgrimage by Paul Coelho.

For reasons that will become obvious shortly, I've had walking pilgrimages on the brain a bit lately,

and it's always nice to get some perspective from outside Japan.

Go to audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 101, Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains.

This week, we're going to try something new on the show.

When I first went to Japan many years ago,

the first place I spent any serious length of time was Tokushima prefecture on the island of Shukoku, in a small city

called Naruto, tragically without a single ninja to its name. There, a dear friend I was staying with,

took me, along with two other pals of mine from the States, to a nearby Buddhist temple,

and explained to us that the temple was the starting point for a Buddhist pilgrimage that covered the entire island.

I thought it was really fascinating and the whole idea always stuck with me.

So you see I've always really wanted to do a show on Buddhist pilgrimages in general, and the Shikoku pilgrimage in particular,

but frankly they're not something I really know anything about.

Then, lucky me, I discovered a few months ago that a friend of a friend had all the

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