The Cult
Kumano was worshipped by walking. The three shrines of the Kumano Sanzan — Hongū at the meeting of the mountain rivers, Hayatama at Shingū by the water, and Nachi beneath its waterfall — formed a single sacred circuit, and the pilgrim who completed all three rang the rite's full chord. From the tenth century retired emperors led the way — Uda first, Go-Shirakawa by tradition some thirty times — and by the medieval period onshi, shrine priests who recruited confraternities (kō) far beyond the mountains, were funneling commoners along the Kumano Kodō in what chronicles called the ant pilgrimage, so thick were the processions. At Nachi the deity dwells in the fall itself: the kami Hime is the cascade, greeted each July by great fire-torches descending the slope before the water. Votive evidence abounds — stone pavements, the sub-shrine line of the ōji, painted mandalas carried home as proof of completion. The cult never died: today's pilgrims and the yamabushi who still train in the mountains continue it, and the shrines are living institutions, not ruins.