Nagaoji —
where Shizuka Gozen laid down her life.

長尾寺 Nagaoji · Temple 87 · Sanuki City, Kagawa

Shizuka

Shizuka Gozen was a 白拍子 shirabyōshi, a dancer at the capital, and the beloved of Minamoto no Yoshitsune — the most brilliant commander of his age and, after his brother turned on him, the most hunted man in Japan.

When Yoshitsune fled, she was captured. Taken to Kamakura, she was made to dance before the men hunting him, and she danced a song of longing for him to their faces. Her child by him was killed.

The tradition here says that she came to this temple afterwards with her mother, cut off her hair, and renounced the world.

The pilgrimage is full of stories of people who walked it to recover from something. This is where one of them began.

The things that are still done here

What makes Nagaoji worth more than a stamp in your pilgrim book is that it is a working temple in an ordinary town, where small rites are still performed by people who live nearby — the kind of thing nobody explains to a visitor, because everybody local already knows.

They tend to have one feature in common: you do something with your hands, or with your breath. Nothing has to be believed, nothing has to be affirmed. You put a thing down, or you let a thing break.

That is how most of this tradition actually works, and it is almost never what people expect when they arrive.

Going there

In the centre of Sanuki City, a short walk from the station, flat and easy to reach. Easy to underestimate, too — most pilgrims pass through on their way to Temple 88 without stopping.