Ōhechi (Southern Coastal Route)

Tanabe to Nachi via Kushimoto · the southern 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 Ōhechi (大辺路) is the southern coastal route of the Kumano Kodo: roughly 90 km from Tanabe south and east along the coast, rounding Cape Shionomisaki at the southern tip of the Kii Peninsula via Kushimoto, to Kumano Nachi Taisha. It follows the coast rather than the mountain passes of the Nakahechi and Kohechi, and 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 Ōhechi, Tanabe to Kumano Nachi Taisha via Kushimoto. Not measured on a walked line — see below.

Distance	~90 km (a scoping estimate, not measured — no walked line exists yet)
Typical duration	3–6 days (typical 4)
Topology	Linear
Difficulty	Moderate
Countries	Japan
Start	Tanabe, 10 m
End	Kumano Nachi Taisha, 330 m

Why this ships without geometry

No OpenStreetMap relation exists for the Ōhechi at all. A sweep of every route=hiking|foot|pilgrimage relation across the whole Tanabe → Kushimoto → Nachi corridor returned seven relations, and all seven belong to the Nakahechi or the Kohechi — nothing named or tagged for the Ōhechi. The trail exists in OpenStreetMap only as five loose, unrelated ways clustered inside Tanabe, 0.58 km in total: way 298987443 (tagged name:en="Kumano Kodo Ohechi Route") plus four unnamed neighbours.

No relation id is recorded in this section's metadata.json, because none exists to record; inventing one, or pinning a neighbouring route's relation, would misrepresent what OpenStreetMap holds. This section will ship its walked line, stages, and waypoints once a route relation for the Ōhechi is created upstream.

Tradition

Primary faith: Shinto, syncretic with Buddhism

The Ōhechi connects Tanabe, the traditional starting point of several Kumano Kodo routes, with Kumano Nachi Taisha, one of the three Grand Shrines of Kumano, by way of the coast and Cape Shionomisaki.

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-ohechi/. Available via jsDelivr CDN:

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

Route ID: kumano-kodo-ohechi