Oshi

   Or onshi. Pilgrim masters, based at Ise (see Ise Jingu). A network of 600-700 oshi and their employees and associates governed the pilgrimage trade to Ise by the seventeenth century. Pilgrimage had developed out of earlier Watarai Shinto teachings into regular visits and occasional mass-pilgrimages (okage-mairi) involving millions of participants. After the Meiji restoration the trade of oshi was prohibited as part of the process of reserving the Ise jingu solely for imperial use. Some of the kyoha shinto sects of the Meiji period developed out of oshi networks.