Photo/Illutration A page from the official website of Shikoku 88 Sacred Sites Inc. announces that fees for ink inscriptions, seal stamps and other items will be increased from April 1. (Setsuko Tachikawa)

TAKAMATSU--The 88 temples along the famed pilgrimage route on Shikoku Island will raise stamp fees by an average of 200 yen ($1.40) to 500 yen, effective April 1.

The price hike will be the first in 30 years since January 1994, when fees were hiked from 200 yen to 300 yen.

Citing a labor shortage, stamp offices will delay their opening time by one hour to accept pilgrims between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Shikoku 88 Sacred Sites Inc., an entity comprising “fudasho” temples headquartered in Zentsuji, Kagawa Prefecture, held a general meeting Sept. 29 to approve the revisions.

Pilgrims, or “ohenro,” visit each of the 88 pilgrimage sites to collect the names of the temple and its principal deity written in black ink, as well as “shuin” seal stamps in red ink, in their “nokyo-cho” booklets as proof of their devotion.

The route is associated with the famed priest Kukai (774-835), aka Kobo Daishi.

The fee for “kasane-in,” or a shuin stamp given to pilgrims returning for a second or subsequent visit, remains unchanged at 300 yen.

However, the fee to receive the ink inscription and the seal stamp on a hanging scroll will be raised by 200 yen to 700 yen, while the charge for the shuin on the traditional white pilgrim’s garment will be increased by 100 yen to 300 yen.

Discussions to raise fees started three years ago, according to Shuho Hatakeda, the chief priest of Anrakuji, the sixth temple on the pilgrimage route in Kamiita, Tokushima Prefecture. Hatakeda, 72, also acts as head of the association.

Strong objections were voiced to the idea of raising fees when so many people were struggling because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Hatakeda insisted price hikes were inevitable on grounds the sacred sites faced a crisis due to a sharp drop in the number of worshippers and rising utility bills stemming from high fuel prices. The final blow was the temporary closure of the stamp offices to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus.

It was also decided that the stamp offices will operate at reduced hours partly in accordance with the government’s work-style reforms. Some of them are struggling to secure sufficient staff to take turns and receive worshippers during the current 10-hour window when they are open.

The number of worshippers soared after the Seto-Ohashi bridge connecting Shikoku and Honshu, Japan’s main island, opened in 1988.

Bus and walking tours along the pilgrimage route were popular until the 2000s. It was said that up to 100,000 worshippers visited Shikoku each year.

Pilgrimages also became widely popular among foreign visitors, but the boom started to wane among people living in Japan.

The number of worshippers was down by half to around 50,000 even in pre-pandemic years.

Hatakeda called for “understanding of how things changed in society in the past 30 years, during which the fees have been kept the same,” and pledged to continue efforts “to receive ohenro even more warmly.”

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