Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range
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How it came to be
The property is made up of three sacred sites in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula, Yoshino and Omine, Kumano Sanzan and Koyasan, together with the pilgrimage routes that link them to Nara and Kyoto. Shinto, rooted in ancient nature worship, merged here with Buddhism brought from China and the Korean Peninsula, and Shugendo, shaped by both, grew up alongside them. By the late 7th century the Kii Mountains had become a place of mountain asceticism.
In 816 Kukai received permission from Emperor Saga to found a monastery on Koyasan, and he died there in 835. Retired emperors made repeated pilgrimages to the three Kumano shrines; the frequent imperial visits begun by Retired Emperor Shirakawa in 1090 continued until Retired Emperor Kameyama in 1281. Shugendo flourished in the 10th and 11th centuries, with Yoshino, Omine and Kumano as its main training grounds.
The routes linking the sites total 307 km and include the Kumano Kodo, the Omine Okugake route and the Koyasan Choishi route. The property was inscribed on 7 July 2004, the first time a route was listed as World Heritage in Japan. In 2016 a further 40.1 km of the Kumano routes was added.
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