Sanuki (Temples 65-88, and the return to Temple 1)

Sankaku-ji (Temple 65) to Ōkubo-ji (Temple 88), and on to Ryōzen-ji (Temple 1) · the last of the four dōjō

Part of the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage.

Sanuki is the last of the four dōjō and the one that closes the circuit. It runs 202.2 km from Sankaku-ji, Temple 65, to Ōkubo-ji, Temple 88, where the numbering ends — and then 39.8 km further, back to Ryōzen-ji, Temple 1, where the pilgrimage began. Sanuki's own end point and Awa's start point are the same coordinate, which is what makes this a circle rather than a line, and 23 of the 88 temples stand on it.

The temples stand closest together here: Temple 68 to Temple 69 is 0.11 km and Temple 72 to Temple 73 is 0.46 km. The six day stages below were cut from the walked line by a rule rather than copied from a guidebook, so anyone with the files can re-run them and get the same days.

Key Facts

Overview of Sanuki, Temple 65 to Temple 88 and back to Temple 1.

Distance	202.2 km (this section's own walked line through its 24 pinned relations, the last of them the 39.8 km return to Temple 1; their member ways sum to 203.4 km, and the four dōjō together to 1,140.9 km)
Typical duration	8 days (range 6–11)
Topology	Linear
Difficulty	Hard
Countries	Japan
Elevation range	0–900 m (total ascent 3,640 m, descent 3,970 m); Unpen-ji, Temple 66 and the highest temple on the circuit, stands at 911 m
Start	Sankaku-ji, Temple 65
End	Ryōzen-ji, Temple 1 (15 m)

The typical duration is a pace estimate, not a stage count: it divides this section's 202.2 km by the pace the pilgrimage's own declared figures imply, about 26.7 km a day. The day cut below divides the same line 6 ways.

Elevation Profile

Ascent, descent and every high and low point on this page are sampled from the SRTM 30 m digital elevation model at each of the walked line's 9,020 vertices, with a 20 m threshold so the model's own noise is not counted as climbing. This section carried none of it until now: the line is two-dimensional, and the figures come from the model rather than from the geometry. Read them as this line's, not the henro trail's in general — where the pinned relations follow a road, the model reads the road.

The files also hold point heights on temples, where OpenStreetMap tagged one. Eighteen of the 88 temple waypoints carry one — three in Awa, three in Tosa, five in Iyo and seven in Sanuki. Sanuki's seven are Unpen-ji (Temple 66) at 911 m, Iyadani-ji (Temple 71) at 160 m, Shiromine-ji (Temple 81) at 250 m, Negoro-ji (Temple 82) at 330 m, Yashima-ji (Temple 84) at 280 m, Yakuri-ji (Temple 85) at 200 m and Ōkubo-ji (Temple 88) at 450 m. Against those, the model reads 465 m at Ōkubo-ji and 292 m at Yashima-ji: it runs a little above the declared heights across this section, which is what a model that reads canopy top does. Unpen-ji is the exception and the one worth naming — the model reads 894 m at the vertex nearest it, and 900 m where the line runs highest on the crossing, against the map's 911 m for the temple itself. Unpen-ji's 911 m is the highest of the eighteen, and that rank belongs to the pilgrimage rather than to any one day of it; the 0–900 m above is this section's own line. A height at a gate is still not a profile between gates, and nothing here interpolates one.

Stages

A day ends at a temple whenever one falls between 25 and 30 km along the walked line; where none does, it ends at the nearest named accommodation or town waypoint on the line instead, and a day that comes within 30 km of the section's own end anchor ends there whatever its length. One of Sanuki's six days ends at a temple the band chose, one at a lodging and two at a town; the fifth ends at Ōkubo-ji, held fixed, and the sixth at the section's own boundary.

Two clauses are specific to this section, and they are two rather than one. Ōkubo-ji, Temple 88, is held as a day end because the temple sequence completes there — without the hold that day runs 190 m further to a lodging, leaving the closing return with no day-end at all. And the return itself, Ōkubo-ji to Ryōzen-ji, is walked as one stage — without that clause the fallback emits a 0.19 km day to that same lodging, the only named place the record holds anywhere past Ōkubo-ji.

Stage 4 runs 59.6 km, the longest day of the forty the four dōjō were cut into, and it is long because of an absence: OpenStreetMap records no named accommodation and no town on the walked line between Sakaide and Sanuki, so the fallback had nowhere nearer to stop. The stage carries that as a warning in stages.json. No maximum refuses a day that long, because refusing would leave the stretch with no day-end at all.

The hours are derived, not reported. Each is Naismith's rule read at two paces and rounded to whole hours — five kilometres an hour plus 600 m of ascent at the fast end, 3.5 km/h plus 500 m at the slow — with no roughness factor, because this dataset holds no walking times for the henro trail to fit one against. Read a window as what a day's distance and climbing cost rather than as a day anyone walks in one go. Stage 4's 14–19 hours is what 59.6 km and 1,110 m of ascent come to, and is the same absence its warning describes. metadata.json's hoursNote gives the rule and what it was checked against.

Interior Journey

The narrative and reflection prompt for each stage below are editorial writing, grounded only in what the stage contains — its temples, shrines, towns, spacing and distance. All 6 were read against that evidence and cleared by a reviewer who did not write them, then edited for readability; the edited wording is awaiting a second reading. See docs/review/shikoku-88.md for the checks stage by stage, and docs/data-sources.md for what is, and isn't, independently sourced.

Stage 1 Sankaku-ji (Temple 65) → Fujikawa Ryokan 38.3 km · Two temples in thirty-eight kilometres

Unpen-ji comes 20.5 km in, and nothing is mapped in the 10.0 km before it. The map gives it a height of 911 m, the highest of the seven it gives this section's temples; the other sixteen carry none. A viewpoint and a café stand just past it. Daikō-ji follows 321 m past the 30 km edge of the band the day cut ends days in, so no temple ends this day and it runs on to Fujikawa Ryokan. Fourteen bus stops stand on it, and nothing on it is mapped as a town.

Daikō-ji stands three hundred and twenty-one metres past where a day of this length would have ended. How much of a day is decided by three hundred metres?

Stage 2 Fujikawa Ryokan → Konzo-ji (Temple 76) 29.3 km · Nine temples, and a hundred and seventeen metres between the first two

More temples stand on this day than on any other of the six. It begins on a pair: Jinne-in 0.8 km in and Kannon-ji 117 m after it, the narrowest step between temples in this section. Motoyama-ji follows, and then the spacing opens — 11.7 km to Iyadani-ji, with 6.6 km inside it holding nothing mapped at all, ending at Mitoyo. Five more temples come in the 11.9 km after Iyadani-ji, two of them, Mandara-ji and Shusshaka-ji, 0.46 km apart. Three more places meet the way at exactly the point Zentsū-ji does — a sacred place, a wayside shrine and a place to stay — and Konzō-ji closes the day.

The closest two temples in this section stand on this day, and so does its emptiest stretch. Does a day have one shape, or as many as you notice?

Stage 3 Konzo-ji (Temple 76) → Sakaide 14.9 km · Four towns in eleven kilometres, and then none for sixty

Four of Sanuki's mapped towns stand on this one day, inside 11.4 km of each other — Tadotsu, Marugame, Utazu and Sakaide, where the day ends. It is the shortest of the six, and the day after it is the longest of the forty. More places stand on it to the kilometre than on any other day here, thirty of them places to eat. Dōryū-ji comes 4.0 km in and Goshō-ji 11.2. No temple falls where a day of this length would end — Sanuki Kokubun-ji falls just short of the band and Shiromine-ji just past it — so the day stops at a town instead, and the next place the map could have stopped it is 59.6 km on.

The shortest day of the six stands directly before the longest, and one gap in the map makes both. Does a map owe you an even pace?

Stage 4 Sakaide → Sanuki 59.6 km · The longest day of the forty, and the most crowded

59.6 km, the longest day of the forty this cut made, and it is long for an absence: nothing is mapped as a place to stay for 86.1 km, and this day is 59.6 of that stretch. No town falls in it either, until the one it ends at. What the day is not is empty. More places stand on this one day than on any other of the six, and the longest run with nothing mapped on it is only 4.2 km. Seven temples come among them — Tennō-ji, Sanuki Kokubun-ji, Shiromine-ji, Negoro-ji, Ichinomiya-ji, Yashima-ji and Yakuri-ji — and thirty-one places to eat. Everything except somewhere to stop.

The busiest day in Sanuki and the longest of the forty, and those are one fact: nothing mapped on it is a place to sleep. How much of what you carry is decided by what someone wrote down?

Warning: 59.6 km, the longest day on the circuit. OpenStreetMap records no named accommodation or town on the walked line between Sakaide and Sanuki, so the rule had nowhere nearer to stop. Carry water and food for the whole distance, or break the day at a place off the line.

Stage 5 Sanuki → Okubo-ji (Temple 88) 20.3 km · The last three of the eighty-eight

Shidō-ji stands 0.7 km into this day, Nagao-ji 7.6, and Ōkubo-ji closes it — the eighty-sixth, eighty-seventh and eighty-eighth temples. The last mapped places to stay before Ōkubo-ji come 8 km in, and of the 12.7 km from Nagao-ji to Ōkubo-ji, 8.7 carry nothing mapped at all. Neither arm of the day cut chose this ending — Ōkubo-ji is held, because the temple sequence completes there.

The numbering ends at this day's last temple, and the walking has 39.8 km left. Which of the two were you counting?

Stage 6 Okubo-ji (Temple 88) → Ryōzen-ji (Temple 1) 39.8 km · From the eighty-eighth to the first

A temple stands at each end of this day and none between them: Ōkubo-ji, the eighty-eighth, and Ryōzen-ji, the first. 39.8 km, the second-longest of Sanuki's days, and fewer places are mapped on it than on any other day here. Minshuku Yasokubo comes 0.2 km in, and past Ōkubo-ji nothing else is mapped as a place to stay or a town. After it 24.7 km carry nothing mapped at all, the longest such stretch in this section. Then a station, a shrine and a shop inside 1.1 km, then 12.6 km more with a single vending machine on them. The last thing mapped is a bus stop 76 m short of the end, named for the temple it stands in front of. Ryōzen-ji closes Sanuki, and Awa's first day starts from the same point.

Every other section ends where the next one begins; this one ends where the first one began. Who decides when a walk is finished?

Waypoints

385 waypoints stand on this section, each with a type, a stageIndex and a kmFromStart measured along this section's own walked line — of which 50 are sacred sites and 6 are towns.

Waypoint counts by type on Sanuki (Temples 65-88, and the return to Temple 1).

Type	Count
Sacred sites	50
Towns	6
Accommodation	9
Food (restaurant/café)	85
Transport (bus/train)	111
Supply (convenience/toilet)	103
Medical (pharmacy/hospital)	18
Water sources	1
Viewpoints	2
Total	385

The 23 temples are the curated half: hand-placed, carrying a templeNumber and no osmId, and they are what the day rule looks for. One more is curated without being hand-placed — bangai 14, Tsubaki-dō, which OpenStreetMap itself designated and which keeps the osmId it was found by. The other 361 came from OpenStreetMap through the enricher, every one of them carrying an osmId, so a re-run reproduces them.

index.json records this section as sparse: false, at 4.7 places per stage. That bar belongs to a section, not to a day: a section clears it when at least half its stages carry a place beyond their own start and end, and five of Sanuki's six do. The 4.7 is the mean of those beyond-the-ends counts — 4, 9, 5, 8, 2 and 0.

What the section does not hold is beds. From 63.8 km to 149.9 km — 86.1 km of walked line — the record marks no place to stay at all, and past Ōkubo-ji it holds exactly one. That single absence is what makes stage 3 the shortest of the six and stage 4 the longest of the forty.

Four waypoints in this file never reach a stage. The corridor that admitted them is measured against route.geojson, which carries every member way of the 24 relations and runs 371.1 km against the walked line's 202.2; build-ways then measures against the walked line and drops anything more than 300 m from it. All four are named, with their distances, in ways/report.json.

Help fill in what is missing.

Geometry

The walked line is cut from 24 OpenStreetMap relations, 65番札所~66番札所 through 87番札所~88番札所, plus 13766029 — 四国遍路 88番札所大窪寺~1番札所霊山寺, the 39.84 km closing return that makes the pilgrimage circular. In walking order. The Overpass query is pilgrimage-wide and returns all 89 四国遍路 relations; each section pins the slice of that result it walks, and a boundary relation belongs to the section that walks it — so Sanuki begins at Temple 65, where Iyo's last relation ends.

The circle closes exactly. This section's last coordinate is the same pair of numbers Awa's line starts from, [134.5025195, 34.1595888], not merely a point near it.

route.geojson holds all of those relations' member ways, 9,678 points and 371.1 km of them, including the spurs and side paths a walker does not follow. route.main.geojson is the shortest connected path through the same graph — 9,020 points, 202.2 km — and it is the line every stage, every stage distance and every waypoint position on this page is measured along.

Tradition

Primary faith: Shingon Buddhism

The circuit traces the path of the monk Kūkai (774–835), Kōbō Daishi, who founded Shingon Buddhism in Japan and practised asceticism across Shikoku before founding the monastic centre on Mount Kōya. The 88-temple circuit was formalised during the Edo period.

The pilgrimage maps a stage of spiritual progression onto each of Shikoku's four provinces, and the one this section's metadata.json records for Sanuki is nirvana.

Credential: the nōkyōchō (納経帳), a calligraphy book bought at Temple 1 and carried across all four dōjō. At each temple the monks write the temple name, its principal deity and its number, and apply three red stamps. A completed book earns the kechigan-shō, the completion certificate — which is awarded for the circuit, not for any one section of it.

Files & CDN

The complete dataset lives at routes/shikoku-88-sanuki/:

Per-route data files for Sanuki (Temples 65-88, and the return to Temple 1).

File	Contents
metadata.json	Overview, tradition, logistics, and provenance — including the full day rule
route.geojson	Every member way of the pinned relations — 9,678 points
route.main.geojson	The walked line the stages are cut from — 9,020 points
route.gpx	GPX 1.1 track for GPS apps and devices — 9,678 points
stages.json	6 day stages, with interior journey narratives
waypoints.geojson	389 waypoints — 23 curated temples, 366 from OpenStreetMap
ways/route.json	The stage package's catalog card; ways/report.json beside it records what this section can and cannot promise a walker

Available via jsDelivr CDN:

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/walktalkmeditate/open-pilgrimages@v1/routes/shikoku-88-sanuki/metadata.json
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/walktalkmeditate/open-pilgrimages@v1/routes/shikoku-88-sanuki/route.geojson
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/walktalkmeditate/open-pilgrimages@v1/routes/shikoku-88-sanuki/route.gpx
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/walktalkmeditate/open-pilgrimages@v1/routes/shikoku-88-sanuki/stages.json
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/walktalkmeditate/open-pilgrimages@v1/routes/shikoku-88-sanuki/waypoints.geojson

Route ID: shikoku-88-sanuki