The god of seafarersSeven hundred and eighty-five steps, and dogs sent up them on their owners’ behalf

The shrine sits on Mount Zozu in western Kagawa, and its deity — Omononushi, worshipped as Konpira — protects those who go to sea. Ships have hung votive plaques here for centuries, and vessels still leave models, photographs and steering wheels in the shrine’s collection.

The steps

It is 785 steps to the main hall and 1,368 to the inner shrine, up a stone approach lined with shops. There are palanquin bearers who will carry you part of the way for a fee, and a genuine number of visitors turn back.

The climb is the offering. That is the point of the design.

A pilgrim who could not go sent a dog. It wore a bag with money and a note explaining where it was going, and travellers along the road fed it and passed it on until it reached the shrine and came home.

Konpira dogs

The Konpira-inu is documented in Edo-period accounts. Pilgrimage was expensive and difficult and most people could not leave their work, so proxy pilgrimage was normal — by a neighbour, a paid substitute, or a dog with a purse tied to its neck.

That this worked at all says something about how travel functioned along the Edo road system. There is a statue of one at the shrine, and the souvenir shops sell small versions.

And a theatre nobody expects

At the foot of the approach stands Kanamaruza, built in 1835 and the oldest surviving kabuki playhouse in Japan. Outside performance season you can walk into it, go under the stage, and see the hand-operated revolve and the trap mechanisms that stagehands worked by muscle.

Almost nobody visits it and it is one of the more remarkable interiors in Shikoku.