Kohechi Trail

Walking with Trees: the Kumano Kodo Kohech, October 2019

By Walkopedia friend Stephen Barber. Walkopedia says thank you, Stephen! Fascinating and brings back the extraordinary atmosphere of the region!

Anyone who loves trees, especially ancient trees, and walks the Kohechi will find themselves in arboreal heaven. From Osaka, we took a car for the two-hour journey south to Koyasan. Halfway, a short detour by the town of Katsuragicho took us to the tiny shrine of Jugosha, to meet the biggest living thing in Kansai—a 600-year-old monster camphor tree with a girth of 13.5m (44 feet).

Seasoned travellers in Japan expect exceptional amenities wherever they go. Some will have walked all, or part of, the celebrated pilgrimage routes through Wakayama and Nara prefectures known collectively as the Kumano Kodo—the Ohechi, the Nakahechi and the Kohechi.

Perversely, they may, like my wife Kimiko and I, choose to walk the Kohechi (the ‘small route’) in October—from the Buddhist monasteries of Mount Koya to the three great Kumano shrines. If so, in four days it’s a 70km walk south-east on one of the most remote, arduous and least frequented trails in Japan—and, except in the valleys, with hardly a single village or even public facility along the way.

But this makes the route, formally known as the Kumano Sankei-michi Kohechi, is a uniquely rewarding experience. This thousand-year-old pilgrimage way was mapped out and used by Buddhist monks from Koyasan right up to the middle years of the last century. Once well served by tea houses, long since abandoned, the Kohechi is dotted with their desolate remains, boarded up or even lost to the encroaching.....