Iseji (Eastern/Coastal Route)

Ise Grand Shrine to Kumano Hayatama Taisha · the coastal route of the Kumano Kodo

Part of the Kumano Kodō.

This section ships metadata only. There is no route geometry, no stages, and no waypoints yet — see “Why this ships without geometry” below for exactly why, and “Key Facts” for what is and isn't a measured figure.

The Iseji (伊勢路) is the coastal route of the Kumano Kodo: roughly 170 km from Ise Grand Shrine (Ise Jingū) south along the eastern coast of the Kii Peninsula to Kumano Hayatama Taisha, over more than 20 mountain passes connecting fishing villages. It is one of the four routes of the Kumano Kodo, part of the “Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range” UNESCO World Heritage inscription.

Key Facts

Overview of the Iseji, Ise Grand Shrine to Kumano Hayatama Taisha. Not measured on a walked line — see below.

Distance	~170 km (not measured — no walked line exists yet)
Typical duration	9–14 days (typical 11)
Topology	Linear
Difficulty	Moderate
Countries	Japan
Start	Ise Grand Shrine (Ise Jingū), 30 m
End	Kumano Hayatama Taisha, 10 m

Why this ships without geometry

OpenStreetMap relation 19693803 is the confirmed Iseji — its wikidata tag is Q11379141, its wikipedia tag is ja:伊勢路 (熊野古道), and its website tag is Mie Prefecture's own Kumano Kodō site. The identification is not in doubt. But the relation itself holds only two ways — 120679201, 1.32 km in the hills above Owase, and 1128207928, 0.74 km above Kumano-shi, 2.06 km in total — whose nearest ends are 22.3 km apart, against a route of roughly 170 km. A corridor-wide sweep for the classic Iseji pass names turns up only about 10 km more of loose, unrelated ways, nowhere near enough to assemble a walked line.

That is an upstream OpenStreetMap gap, not a wrong relation id. The id is recorded in this section's metadata.json anyway, so the next attempt at this section starts from a confirmed fact rather than repeating this research. This section will ship its walked line, stages, and waypoints once OpenStreetMap holds enough of the trail to build one.

Tradition

Primary faith: Shinto, syncretic with Buddhism

The Iseji connects Ise Grand Shrine, the most sacred site in Shinto, with Kumano Hayatama Taisha, one of the three Grand Shrines of Kumano — historically the route pilgrims from eastern Japan walked to reach Kumano.

UNESCO status: World Heritage Site — “Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range” — inscribed 2004.

Files & CDN

Only metadata.json exists at routes/kumano-kodo-iseji/. Available via jsDelivr CDN:

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/walktalkmeditate/open-pilgrimages@v1/routes/kumano-kodo-iseji/metadata.json

Route ID: kumano-kodo-iseji