A walk across Shikoku

In January and February 2019, I walked across Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands. This 500-kilometer journey became the subject of my first book, The Wilds of Shikoku.

Shikoku is known for the pilgrimage in which henro, Buddhist pilgrims, walk between 88 of the island’s temples. My journey took a different route: I followed in the footsteps of Alan Booth, the English author of The Roads to Sata and Looking for the Lost, who had walked across Shikoku 36 years earlier, in May and June 1983. Booth’s account of his own journey, Roads Out of Time, was published in the posthumous anthology This Great Stage of Fools.

My route across Shikoku

Following the route described by Booth in Roads Out of Time, I started walking from Cape Kamoda, the easternmost point of Shikoku, on the early afternoon of January 24, 2019. I was accompanied by my friend Gyula Simonyi. Together, we headed for the mountainous interior of Tokushima Prefecture, which forms the eastern quarter of Shikoku, and crossed four high passes until we reached Kōchi Prefecture, the center of the island, on January 30. From there, Gyula traveled back to Tokyo by train, and I walked on alone due west until I reached Cape Sada, the westernmost point of Shikoku, on the evening of February 8.

My journey lasted 16 days, of which 15 were spent walking and one at rest, and took me across three of Shikoku’s four prefectures: Tokushima, Kōchi, and Ehime. I walked every step of the way, a total of about 500 kilometers.

The Wilds of Shikoku

The Wilds of Shikoku, my first book, is about this walk. The book is slim and very large — 36 pages, 260×360 mm — and is published in an edition of 500 hand-numbered, unbound, softcover copies, with hand-screened covers.

Credits

• Written, photographed, and published by Peter Orosz
• Additional photography by Gyula Simonyi
• Edited by Nora Selmeczi and Timothy Harris
• Map by Alice Cleary
• Designed by Akos Polgardi
• Printed by Pauker and Geza Selmeczi
• Product photos by Akos Polgardi and Asami Ikeda
• ISBN 978-615-00-5728-6

Launch party

The book was published in August 2019, and I held two launch parties: Budapest in September and Tokyo in November. At the Tokyo launch, I was joined by editors Nora Selmeczi and Timothy Harris, and we talked about how this project came about.

Shikoku Field Diary

I kept a field diary on Instagram as I walked, originally published under #thewildsofshikoku: a two-week stream of photos and videos accompanied by entries on what I had seen, experienced, and felt. Parts of it would serve as early drafts of The Wilds of Shikoku.

The diary is republished in expanded form, with more photos and improved maps, but with the written entries kept exactly as they first appeared.

Időn kívüli vadonban

Időn kívüli vadonban is a Hungarian translation that combines The Wilds of Shikoku with Alan Booth’s Roads Out of Time, the piece that inspired it. It’s the first Hungarian translation of any of Alan Booth’s works and will be published on this website later in 2025.

You can sign up to this single-use mailing list to receive an email when it’s done.

Notes and acknowledgments

This journey and the subsequent production of The Wilds of Shikoku was supported by an Indiegogo campaign in December 2018 that raised over $11,000 from 164 supporters. Many of their names are included in the print edition of the book.

Gyula Simonyi contributed his photos to both the book and the diary. They aren’t labelled individually but make up about one quarter of the photos.

Ross A. Burns, Iwamatsu Ayasa 岩松綾沙, Gyökös Lajos, Nagate Satomi 長手里美, Nishimoto Kyōko 西本京子, Michael Sileny, Yoshihara Hitoshi 吉原均, Yoshihara Mihály Aoi 吉原ミハイ青衣, and Yoshihara-Horváth Hanga helped and supported me while I was in Japan.

Nora Selmeczi contributed, among other things, the tanka poems scattered throughout the diary, and later edited The Wilds of Shikoku.

Timothy Harris, the late Alan Booth’s friend and editor, introduced me and my work to the audience of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, and acted as The Wilds of Shikoku’s other editor. Tim also provided invaluable assistance with the Hungarian translation by clarifying details in Booth’s Roads Out of Time.

Don McNurlan’s ongoing research into Alan Booth’s journeys cleared up many small inconsistencies in my understanding of Booth’s 1983 route.

Japanese words, geographical locations, and personal names are transcribed into English using the Modified Hepburn romanization. Japanese names are written in the Japanese order, the family name first and the given name second. With the exception of the names of Tokyo, Osaka, Hokkaido, Honshu, and Kyushu, spelled in the international style, long vowels are marked with macrons (ō, ū).

Geographical names are based on data from Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, and other sources. Google Translate and Renzo Japanese were used to clarify transliterations.

Maps are plotted in Gaia GPS, using data from OpenStreetMap, and displayed on Gaia GPS’s Gaia Topo Lite map.

Special thanks to my wife Natalie Kallay, my partner in everything foolish and serious.

Last update: April 19, 2025