In a far-off age -- long before they were savoring the busy touristic delight of gadding around a dozen European cities in as many days -- the Japanese were a fairly untraveled lot.
During the Edo Period (1603-1867), the ruling shoguns believed that home is where the heart is. And that was where they thought the rest of a peasant's body belonged as well -- tilling the land so as to pay the onerous taxes they imposed on them. Rare was the farmer who saw much beyond the village where he was born and where he would die.
For a fortunate few of these feudal peasants, however, there was one occasion on which they might leave their harsh existence briefly behind -- a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Ise.