Dispatch

Rain on the Discipline Coast: Shikoku in a Typhoon Year

· 4 min · Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage

On the morning of 24 October, two walkers on day 23 of the Shikoku henro started where you are supposed to start in autumn, with the forecast. Un gran tifón se aproximaba a las costas de Shikoku, records the Spanish-language journal they keep of the walk. A big typhoon was approaching the coasts of Shikoku.

That same morning, at three o’clock, a tropical depression near the Marshall Islands became Typhoon No. 31. Weathernews put the count in context. It was the first 31st typhoon since 2013, and only the fifth time since 1951 that the count has reached 31 by the end of October. And 2026 has now had a typhoon form in every month from January to October. Since 1951 that has happened three times: 1965, 2015, and this year.

Autumn is meant to be the henro’s second good season. October and November are the mild months, the maples, the weeks people plan around. This year the typhoons have not stopped.

The walkers set out early on a 25-kilometre day. The rain came after about ten kilometres, and they sheltered in what the journal calls un pequeño lugar de descanso para peregrinos, a small rest place for pilgrims, with a roof. After about an hour the rain stopped and the sky cleared. Along the way they watched many Kōchi emergency vehicles go by. They met two other pilgrims at a takoyaki stand. They slept in a minshuku.

Typhoon No. 30 was losing strength before it got near. By the afternoon of 25 October it was in the East China Sea, weakening, and by the next day it was no longer classed as a typhoon at all, just a low over the waters west of Kyushu. On 25 October Weathernews logged 24.0 millimetres of rain in a single hour at Taishō, in Shimanto Town, Kōchi. On the 26th, lying on a front, the low still carried water: authorities were warning of dangerous rainfall from Kantō to Shikoku.

On the 26th the walkers did 22 kilometres from Shimanto to Tosashimizu, una vez más bajo una lluvia que no paró en todo el día: once again, under rain that did not stop all day. They crossed the Shimanto River on a bridge 800 metres long. Somewhere in the wet they passed 500 kilometres. At breakfast, the woman who owned the café would not take their money; it was, she said, her way of giving them an offering. At lunch, an older couple at a café gave them two small bags of sweets and snacks.

The next morning was clear. They walked 20.2 kilometres, some of it on the beach, to Temple 38, Kongōfuku-ji, at Cape Ashizuri, the southern tip of the island. The host of the night before had given them onigiri. Their post that day talks about the sand, and the colour of the sea.

Temples 24 to 39, the Kōchi stretch, are the part of the circle the tradition calls shugyō: austerity, discipline. Two days of walking it in rain is about as plain a version of that word as there is. And osettai, the gift to the pilgrim, did not wait for better weather.

The Pilgrim Age has an essay, The Way Home Is a Circle, with a sentence that sits oddly next to osettai: “Grace is not a gift one person passes to another; it is weather. It arrives or it doesn’t.” Osettai is one person passing something to another. But on the 26th it came the way the rain did, without being asked for: breakfast, from a woman who called it an offering.

The forecast tells you when to start walking. It has never told you whether to go.

If you are walking Shikoku this November: go. October and November are still the months to walk it. But this year, do what those two did on day 23: read the forecast before the map each morning, start early, and when a band of rain comes through, wait it out under one of the roofed rest places the route gives you. Book a roof for the nights the forecast is bad. As this goes out, Typhoon No. 31 is far to the south-east, bound for the seas near the Ogasawara Islands, but in a year that has had a typhoon every month since January, keep checking.

If you are choosing a Japanese pilgrim road for late autumn: the Kumano Kodo is the shorter one, a few days on the Kii Peninsula rather than six weeks or more around an island, and its autumn buses run until 10 December. Shikoku asks for more of the season. In a year like this one, it asks you to walk in its weather too.

— Pilgrimages

Questions

Is October to November still a good time to walk the Shikoku 88 in 2026, with so many typhoons?
Usually, yes, but this has not been a usual year. As of late October 2026, Typhoon No. 31 had formed on 24 October, the first 31st typhoon since 2013, and 2026 has had a typhoon form in every month from January to October, which Weathernews counts as only the third such year since 1951, after 1965 and 2015. Typhoon No. 30 was weakening over the East China Sea on 25 October, and rain reached Kōchi: Weathernews logged 24.0 mm in a single hour at Taishō in Shimanto Town that day, and on 26 October authorities were still warning of dangerous rainfall from Kantō to Shikoku. Typhoon No. 31 was heading for the seas near the Ogasawara Islands, far to the south-east. Autumn is still a good season to walk. Just don't treat it as finished with typhoons until the forecast says so.
What do henro walkers do when a typhoon or heavy rain reaches Shikoku?
One Spanish-language journal kept on the route in October 2026 gives a plain answer. On 24 October, with a big typhoon forecast for the Shikoku coast, the two walkers checked the forecast first and set out early on a 25 km day. When the rain began after about 10 km, they sheltered under the roof of a small rest place for pilgrims for about an hour, until it passed and the sky cleared. That night they slept in a minshuku. On 26 October they walked 22 km from Shimanto to Tosashimizu in rain that did not stop all day. The next morning was clear. None of it is complicated: check the forecast first, start early, and use the roofs the route gives you.