The Kumano Kodo

At a glance

The route

The Nakahechi crosses the Kii Peninsula from west to east, from the Tonda River inland from Tanabe, up into the mountains and down to Hongu above the Kumano River. It is walked eastwards, towards the shrine, the way pilgrims came from Kyoto.

Two days, and they are not equal

The bureau’s suggested walk takes two days with a night in Chikatsuyu. The figures below are its own, and its times leave out long stops at shrines, meals and photographs.

Breaking the long second day

The second day is the decision the route forces. There are two ways to soften it. Sleep in Nonaka, near Tsugizakura-oji, and the walk to Hongu becomes about 21 km and 8 to 11 hours: still a long mountain day. Or take a bus from Chikatsuyu and start walking further on, at Kobiro (about 19 km to Hongu), Doyukawa-bashi (about 17 km) or Hosshinmon-oji (about 7.5 km). A bus leaves the forest crossing unwalked, which matters if you want the Dual Pilgrim recognition described below.

At the other end, a first night at Takahara, 3.7 km and one hard climb from Takijiri, suits anyone arriving late from Osaka.

Where to start, and how long to allow

Takijiri-oji is about 40 minutes by local bus from Kii-Tanabe station, which limited express trains reach from Osaka. A night in Tanabe before the walk means a calm first morning and time to collect a pilgrim credential and check the forecast. Allow two walking days at the least, three for comfort, and a night at the end: after twelve hours on the second day, few will want a bus and a train the same evening.

Beyond Hongu: the other grand shrines

Hongu is one of three grand shrines. The other two, Kumano Hayatama Taisha at Shingu and Kumano Nachi Taisha above the Nachi falls, lie beyond it: Nachi by the further trails of the Kogumotori-goe and Ogumotori-goe, or by bus, and Shingu by bus. Neither is part of this 38 km. You can end instead with a night in Yunomine Onsen, a hot spring village a short bus ride from Hongu or a separate walk over the Dainichi-goe.

Planning the journey

When should I walk it?

In spring or autumn, which the bureau recommends, though the route is open all year. Summer brings heat, humidity and heavy rain, all of which make roots and stones slippery and the long day longer. In winter the days are short and shaded or high ground can be icy. In any season, plan around the second day: 9 to 12 hours of walking before stops is the number that decides your start time.

Do I need a permit, and what must I book?

No walking permit is mentioned anywhere in the bureau’s visitor guidance. What you must book is every night’s bed, in advance; do not expect to find a room on arrival. The pilgrim credential that collects the shrine stamps is free and needs no booking.

Where will I sleep and eat?

In minshuku and ryokan, family guesthouses and traditional inns, most of which serve dinner and breakfast; our guide to accommodation in Japan explains how they work. Many will make a packed lunch if you ask when you book, and on the second day you need one: there are no restaurants on the mountain section between Chikatsuyu and Hongu.

Fill your bottles at the tap at Takijiri, and on the second day carry all you need from Chikatsuyu: the bureau lists no reliable water or toilets between Doyukawa-bashi and Hosshinmon-oji. Do not drink from streams. Inns often have a shared bath; our page on onsen etiquette covers the customs.

Can my bags go ahead?

Yes, on the bureau’s daily luggage shuttle, but only if you book it through KUMANO TRAVEL at least 20 days ahead, and only between inns booked through the same service, or from Kii-Tanabe station. You walk with a daypack.

How do I get to the start and back from the finish?

Take the train to JR Kii-Tanabe, then the local bus to Takijiri, about 40 minutes; the bureau says these buses leave from bay 2 outside the station. There is no railway at Hongu. Buses from the Hongu Taisha-mae stop run back towards Kii-Tanabe and Shirahama, south to Shingu, and to the hot spring villages nearby. Check the timetable for your own date, and the last bus before you set out on the second day. Our guide to getting around Japan covers the trains.

How fit do I need to be, and what should I carry?

Fit enough for repeated steep climbs and descents on uneven steps, and for up to 12 hours on foot on the second day. The two days together climb about 2,100 m and descend about 2,200 m. Carry shoes with good grip, a waterproof, a warm layer in the cooler months, water, lunch, basic first aid, an offline or paper map and a charged phone with spare power. Poles help on the long descents. A light daypack does not make the hills smaller.

Can I walk it with children, or with limited mobility?

Not the whole route, for most. It is steep and uneven, with long sections far from a road and few places to stop. The bureau publishes no minimum age and no step-free route. The gentlest stretch is the last, Hosshinmon-oji to Hongu: 7.5 km, 2 to 3 hours and grade 2, but still on forest paths and descents. The grand shrine itself can be reached by road and bus.

Can I become a Dual Pilgrim?

Yes, if you have also walked the Camino de Santiago. The programme began in 2015 for people who complete both World Heritage pilgrimages; its emblem joins the Camino’s scallop shell to Kumano’s three-legged crow, the Yatagarasu. For the Camino you need at least the last 100 km on foot or horseback, or 200 km by bicycle; our page on the Camino Francés explains that route.

For Kumano the bureau lists five ways, all on foot, and this walk from Takijiri to Hongu is the first. The short walk from Hosshinmon-oji counts only with visits to the other two grand shrines as well. Collect the oji stamps and the completion stamp at Hongu in the free Dual Pilgrim credential, then register at a designated site such as the centres in Tanabe and Hongu.

If the journey breaks down

The route crosses roads in places, and buses run along some of them. Know where those places are before you start each day.

• Heavy rain or a landslip. Check the bureau’s trail notices and the forecast each morning. Never enter a closed section; take the bus round it, or stop for the day. When we checked on 9 November 2026 no closure was listed on this line, which says nothing about your date.
• Exhaustion on the second day. Start early, carry plenty, and decide by Kobiro or Doyukawa-bashi whether the rest is safe in daylight. A road exit is better than a forest descent in the dark.
• No bed. Rooms in Chikatsuyu and Nonaka are few. If a booking falls through, look for a bus-linked room in a larger place rather than walking on in hope.
• Lost or hurt. Stop, check the waymarks and the map, and head for the nearest road or bus stop. In an emergency call 119 for an ambulance or fire service, or 110 for the police, and give the nearest waymarker number and the last oji you passed. Reception in the forest is patchy, so tell your inn your plan for the day.
• A missed last bus at Hongu. There are inns, but they may be full. Know the last departure before you leave Chikatsuyu.

What the road built

The road exists because of what people believed lay at the end of it.

Why Kumano drew pilgrims

Before there was a road, the mountains were sacred. Kumano was a place of nature worship from prehistoric times, rooted in the belief our guide to Japan’s temples and shrines explains: that kami, the gods of Shinto, dwell in mountains, forests, waterfalls and old trees. Here the forests, the rivers and the great falls at Nachi were held to be their homes.

When Buddhism reached Japan in the sixth century, ascetics came to these mountains to train, and Kumano became one of the places where the two faiths grew together, the partnership the same guide calls shinbutsu-shūgō. The gods of the three grand shrines came to be seen as forms of Buddhas. Hongu’s god was identified with Amida, the Buddha of the Western Pure Land, and Kumano came to be thought of as a Pure Land on earth: a Shinto sanctuary at the end of a Buddhist hope.

That made the journey a kind of death and rebirth. To walk into these remote mountains and come out again was to be reborn, and Kumano is still spoken of in Japan as a land of rebirth. The times sharpened the need. From the eleventh century many believed the world had entered mappō, an age in which the Buddha’s teaching would decline and hardship spread, and between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries the imperial family made the pilgrimage from Kyoto almost a hundred times.

Purity mattered too. In Shinto, as our guide puts it, cleanliness is close to holiness, and pilgrims purified themselves at Takijiri before entering the mountains. Yet Kumano’s faith also made a point of openness, and would not turn the impure away, as the story of Izumi Shikibu below shows.

When the imperial pilgrimages ended in the thirteenth century, samurai followed, then merchants and ordinary people. Wandering nuns, the Kumano bikuni, carried the faith across Japan from the sixteenth century, and the crowds on the road became proverbial: ari no Kumano mōde, the pilgrimage of ants.

The thresholds and the villages

The Nakahechi is a line of thresholds. Along it stood the oji, subsidiary shrines of the Kumano grand shrines, where walkers prayed, rested and were watched over on the way. People speak of the ninety-nine oji, but the number means many, not a count.

The road made the villages too. Over 900 years ago, at the height of the imperial pilgrimages, parties of up to 300 people were put up at Chikatsuyu, the bureau records. Tea houses stood on the ridges for walkers to rest, and their sites, Uwada-jaya on the first day and Toganoki-jaya near Tsugizakura, are still marked beside the path, though nothing is sold there now.

The springs, lanes and settlement names of Chikatsuyu and Nonaka survive because the path served the people who lived here as well as those passing through. Deep in the forest of the second day, the remains of Yukawa show that some of the empty mountain was once a village.

Takijiri-oji

One of the five great oji, and the start. The bureau calls it the entrance to the sacred mountains, the place where the passage into the realm of the gods begins. Pilgrims purified themselves here and found lodgings and attendants; today walkers collect their first stamp beside the Kumano Kodo Kan visitor centre, fill their bottles and start to climb.

Chikatsuyu-oji

One of the oldest oji, in a mountain basin about 300 m up on the Hiki River, roughly halfway to Hongu. It was a major stop for the imperial pilgrimages, and it is still the night stop on the bureau’s two-day walk, with a road, a bus and inns.

Tsugizakura-oji

A shrine above the village of Nonaka, reached by old lanes and stone steps and standing among great cedars. The naturalist Minakata Kumagusu campaigned to save the trees of this district, and these survive. Nearby are the site of the Toganoki-jaya tea house and the Nonaka-no-Shimizu spring, both old services for walkers.

Hosshinmon-oji

Another of the five great oji. It marked the outermost entrance to the sacred precinct of Hongu, one of a series of gates that measured the stages of the pilgrim’s approach. Today it is also where a bus meets the path, for the last 7.5 km.

Fushiogami-oji

The last named oji before Hongu, and the first place from which pilgrims could see their goal. Its name means to kneel and pray, which is what they did. A memorial to the poet Izumi Shikibu stands at the lookout, for the story told below.

Kumano Hongu Taisha

The goal: one of the three grand shrines of Kumano, reached by a flight of stone steps into a grove of cedar and cypress. It stood on the river flat at Oyunohara until a flood in 1889; the surviving buildings were moved to this higher ground. Entry to the grounds is free, and the completion stamp is here.

What the walking is like

The Nakahechi is short in kilometres and long in effort. The ground goes up and down more than it goes along, and the day is measured in hours.

The first day: into the mountains

From the shrine at Takijiri the path goes straight up into the forest. There is no warm-up: earth, roots and stone steps from the first minutes, under trees that close over the climb, and slippery after rain. Then the slope eases into the lanes of Takahara, houses on a mountainside, and on a clear day the ridges lie in layers across the valley.

Beyond it the path climbs again through mixed forest, past the clearing at Jujo-oji and the old tea house site at Uwada-jaya, about 690 m up, then falls and rises so often that distance stops being a measure of effort. A creek, a roadside rest stop at Gyuba-doji-guchi, a last stretch of woodland, and the path comes down into Chikatsuyu: a village with a river, a road and somewhere to sleep.

The second day: the passes

The second morning starts gently, on paved lanes between houses, then climbs through Nonaka past an old spring to the great cedars at Tsugizakura-oji. Beyond Kobiro-toge the settlements end. The path crosses Waraji-toge, drops down Me-zaka and climbs O-zaka to Iwagami-oji, about 650 m up, high in the forest with few views. Tea house sites appear beside the path, ruins with nothing to buy.

A mossy passage beside water leads to Jagata Jizo, past the remains of Yukawa, and up again to Mikoshi-toge. By now the effort is cumulative, and the long descent to Hosshinmon-oji comes late in the day.

The last 7.5 km, and arriving

From Hosshinmon the walk changes again: farm buildings, a former school, tea fields and lanes between short stretches of forest. At Fushiogami-oji the trees open across the valley, and in clear weather Hongu’s sacred ground is in view for the first time. Then the path comes down through the last villages and climbs stone steps into the cedar-framed grounds of Kumano Hongu Taisha.

What writers and artists have made of it

The poet Fujiwara no Teika walked this road in 1201 with the retired emperor Go-Toba, and his diary is largely a record of suffering: steep ground, nothing eaten since dawn, no strength left. All day over steep ground, he wrote; my heart was as in a dream.

At Fushiogami a stone remembers the poet Izumi Shikibu. Legend says she reached the lookout around a thousand years ago, barred by her period from going on, and that night the god of Kumano answered her poem in a dream: since I am a god who mingles with the dust of the world, why should the moon’s hindrance trouble me? The bureau calls that openness a fundamental theme of Kumano faith.

What walkers say it did to them

People walk the Nakahechi for many reasons, and some come home saying it changed them. What follows is what they report and what researchers have found, set beside the questions this site keeps asking about long journeys. It is not a promise.

Why people walk it

Published accounts give devotion, the thought of walking a road used for a thousand years, the mountains, the physical challenge, a wish for quiet or for time to think, and, for some, the recognition shared with the Camino. No single reason dominates, and the walk cannot be reduced to one spiritual purpose. Kato and Progano, studying the route in 2017, found its pilgrimage, its tourism and its villages bound up together: the inns and hosts who make the walk possible are part of what walkers meet.

What walkers report

Peter J Baumgartner, walking the Nakahechi on his own in 2024, wrote of a small ritual at a wayside shrine that left him with a sense of good fortune and joy, and of steep ground answered each evening by the welcome of a traditional inn.

Richard Franks, on a shorter guided section near Hongu in 2024, found that the woodland, the stopping places and the arrival turned his thoughts to purification and renewal. Julian Smith, walking Chikatsuyu to Hongu in winter, was aware of the short day and found the local stories, and the signs of villages emptying, as absorbing as the shrines.

Two Japanese walkers wrote about it on the platform note; we read both in machine translation, which may lose nuance. Hide Watanabe, forced by late bookings to walk the stages out of order in 2026, found it sharpened his attention to the ordinary villages, their sounds, and how the pilgrims’ road runs through everyday life.

Rio, on the long day to Hongu in 2025, describes awe at mountains wrapped in cloud, a sense of understanding something of why people worshipped mountains, and satisfaction at becoming a Dual Pilgrim after the Camino.

What the research found

The scientific evidence for this walk is thin. The few studies of the Kumano Kodo looked at walkers on the day, not at whether anything lasted. What walkers report, though, lines up with wider research on what vastness, effort, other people and slowness do to us, and the Nakahechi puts all four into two days.

Questions to walk with

None of this proves that the walk changes anyone. These are the questions worth carrying.

What does a forest full of gods do to a self? Keltner and Haidt defined awe in 2003 as meeting something so vast that the mind has to make room for it, what Piaget called accommodation. In five studies published in 2015, Piff, Keltner and colleagues found that awe made people feel smaller and less self-important, and more generous.

On the Kumano Kodo the vastness is not only the mountains: it is the sense, which Rio describes, that the mountains themselves were held sacred, and that a thousand years of walkers came for that.

Why does Kumano keep saying come as you are? In Keltner’s collection of awe stories from 26 countries, the most common source was not nature but moral beauty: other people’s kindness, courage and openness. Kumano’s own story of itself is about openness, a god who would not turn a woman away, and Baumgartner’s account dwells on the inn that took him in at the end of each hard day.

Whether the walk makes people more open, or only puts them where openness is easy to notice, is a question, not a finding.

Does the effort matter? The twelfth-century song above says it does: riding would be no penance. Our guide to temples and shrines makes the same point about Japan’s sacred places: the effort of the climb is part of the devotion, not an obstacle to it.

In Oppezzo and Schwartz’s experiments in 2014, people produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In a randomised trial by Sturm and colleagues in 2020, older adults who took a weekly fifteen-minute awe walk for eight weeks reported more joy and compassion than ordinary walkers. Those were short walks near home; what twelve hours over the passes does, no study we found has measured.

What might make it last? The educationist Jack Mezirow argued that lasting change in how adults see the world tends to begin with a disorienting experience and holds only when reflection and different action follow. On that account a hard day in a sacred forest might supply the start, and what happens after Hongu decides the rest.

The sources for every story and study here are listed under Reading at the foot of the page. Our essay Kindred Spirits follows the same questions through writers who walked to answer them.