For more than 1,000 years devout Japanese Buddhists have trodden a holy path around Shikoku island, but technology is changing tradition, enabling would-be pilgrims to hire proxies or make virtual visits to temples at the click of a mouse.

Several websites offer proxy pilgrimages to the 88 temples in Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands, to rid oneself of worries, wipe away sins or to pray for health and prosperity.

Completion of the arduous, looped route stretching over 1,450 kilometers (900 miles) is also said to release the pilgrim from the cycle of rebirth.

Established by the wanderings of Buddhist saint Kobo Daishi in the early ninth century, it is one of the two most important pilgrimages in Japan.

On foot it takes about two to three months to complete, at a cost of at least 500,000 yen (4,580 dollars), according to those who have done it before.

Eiichi Tabuchi, 50, has a website offering proxy pilgrimages to all 88 temples by car, which takes the agent about 20 days, for 148,000-328,000 yen per person.

The charge differs depending on whether the client orders a book or scroll, or both, to collect red stamps from each of the temples as proof of his or her "pilgrimage".

"We have got orders from about 30 people over the past year," said Tabuchi, who also runs a house remodelling company in Tokushima, where the religious journey is supposed to start.

"Most of our clients are in their 50s or older and cannot visit the holy places themselves for health and other reasons," Tabuchi said.

About 150,000 people physically do the pilgrimage annually, according to the liaison office of the temples, which are distributed throughout the Tokushima, Kochi, Ehime and Kagawa prefectures.

Those undertaking it can be seen walking Shikoku's roads wearing a white cotton "hanten" jacket and a conical, sedge hat, and carrying a staff with bells while intoning Buddhist verses.

"You cannot make the pilgrimage if you lack either physical strength, time or money," said Kazumi Kobayashi, who also offers a substitute pilgrimage online.

Kobayashi, a 44-year-old car salesman, said he thought of doing the pilgrimage for others when his father died three years ago.

"When I learned my father, who was suffering from senile dementia, had only a few more months to live, I regretted I had not done many good things for him," Kobayashi recalled.

As a last act of filial piety, he decided to undertake the pilgrimage because of a folk belief that those wearing white hanten bearing the 88 temples' seals will go to paradise.

Kobayashi spent two weeks collecting all the seals for a hanten for his father. "I completed the pilgrimage two months before he died, and he was cremated wearing the hanten," he said.

"Our neighbors were so impressed to see it, and that was when I realised many elder people want to make the pilgrimage," Kobayashi said.

He charges 137,000 yen for a pilgrimage that yields a fully stamped white hanten, 149,000 yen for one with a book of temple stamps and 179,000 yen for the scroll version.

The "Ohenro-san (Pilgrims) Game" was launched in April by consumer electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.'s wholly owned subsidiary, Pin Change Co. Ltd.

Scenes of the 88 temples roll by on a television screen as you walk on a treadmill or push the buttons on a Nintendo (news - web sites) Game Cube console.

Since its launch, it has sold about 3,000 sets, mainly to people aged over 50, according to spokesman Akihiro Tateno. The 12,800-yen basic set comes complete with a pedometer.

"Many people over a certain age want to go on the pilgrimage but few of them can realize their ambition ... so, we decided to offer them virtual experience in addition to some exercise for their health," he said.

(People’s Daily November 29, 2003)