In “Things Become Other Things,” Craig Mod’s memoir about walking across the Kii Peninsula in western Japan, he describes how pilgrimages once offered an easy way for common folk to get permission to travel the land. When communities didn’t have enough money to bankroll everyone who fancied venturing to Ise Shrine or the 88 Temples of Shikoku, the wayfarers were chosen by lottery. As Mod writes, they were “lucky schmucks, carrying the purse of their village warm in the loincloths around their navels, adopted by all.”

For the past decade or so, Mod has been working in a similar spirit. The longtime Japan resident, originally from the United States, describes himself as a writer, photographer and walker — not a vocation that you hear very often these days. He’s been on some monster journeys: In 2019, he spent several months walking solo along the historic Nakasendo and Tokaido highways between Tokyo and Kyoto. But one of the places to which he’s returned most often is the Kii Peninsula, home to Ise Shrine and the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route.

Things Become Other Things, by Craig Mod. 320 pages, RANDOM HOUSE, Nonfiction.