Okage Mairi

Okage Mairi (also called Ise Mairi or, for its most unusual feature, Nuke Mairi, "pilgrimage by stealing away") names the periodic mass pilgrimages to Ise Grand Shrine that swept the Edo period roughly every sixty years, drawing millions of commoners and, at their peak, reportedly over 200,000 pilgrims a day. Distinctively, servants and children would set out without their masters' or parents' permission, a socially tolerated exception that made the pilgrimage a rare occasion of freedom of movement in a strictly regulated society, and inns and shops along the pilgrim routes grew into dedicated pilgrim towns to serve the crowds.