Takamatsu Airport Reimagines the Shikoku Pilgrimage for a New Generation
Neohenro is a 2018 film and social media campaign created by Dentsu for Takamatsu Airport that reinterprets the traditional 88-temple Shikoku pilgrimage by mapping 88 photogenic locations across Shikoku's four prefectures, inviting a new generation of travellers to discover the region through contemporary visual culture.
Takamatsu Airport launched the Neohenro campaign on March 27, 2018, according to takamatsu-airport.com. The timing was deliberate and strategically loaded: the campaign preceded the airport's privatisation by just five days, with the ownership transition completing on April 1, 2018, as documented by takamatsu-airport.com. The campaign therefore served a dual purpose — repositioning Takamatsu Airport as the gateway to Shikoku at the precise moment its commercial identity was being remade, while simultaneously generating audience awareness for Kagawa and the broader Shikoku region.
The creative architecture of Neohenro mirrors the structure of the Ohenro pilgrimage itself. Where the traditional circuit connects 88 Buddhist temples associated with the monk Kukai across the prefectures of Kagawa, Tokushima, Kochi, and Ehime, the Neo Shikoku Pilgrimage connects 88 locations chosen for their visual and experiential resonance with contemporary travel sensibilities. The campaign distributed its content across Takamatsu Airport's official YouTube channel, website, and Instagram account, per takamatsu-airport.com, reaching audiences through both long-form film and the image-first logic of social platforms. The film was published on April 1, 2018, under the original title NEOHENRO | 四国ネオ遍路（順打ちver.）, with the Instagram component launched slightly earlier, on March 19, 2018, according to takamatsu-airport.com. In Japan, Neohenro stands as one of the more structurally ambitious regional airport campaigns of its era, using the grammar of pilgrimage — sequence, discovery, and spiritual geography — to reframe leisure travel for the Instagram generation.
Takamatsu Airport occupies a specific and competitive position within Japan's aviation landscape. Haneda Airport handled 85.68 million passengers in 2017, making it Japan's busiest airport, according to Narita-Airport Jp, a figure that underscores the scale disadvantage facing regional gateways like Takamatsu. Against that backdrop, differentiation through cultural identity rather than operational scale becomes the only credible strategic path.
Takamatsu Airport handled approximately 2.94 million total passengers in 2017 and approximately 3.06 million in 2018, according to takamatsu-airport.com. Its international passenger segment grew from 596,479 in 2017 to 624,206 in 2018, a year-over-year increase of roughly 4.7 percent, per takamatsu-airport.com. More strikingly, international traffic at the airport expanded from 177,416 passengers in 2013 to 624,206 in 2018, representing compound annual growth of approximately 28.6 percent over five years, as documented by takamatsu-airport.com. This trajectory gave Dentsu and Takamatsu Airport both a genuine growth story to build on and a clear strategic imperative: sustain inbound momentum at the moment of privatisation by making the destination itself more legible and desirable to travellers already choosing Shikoku.
The consumer insight underlying Neohenro is precise. The traditional Ohenro pilgrimage is one of Japan's most recognised cultural exports, yet its religious framing places it outside the consideration set of most leisure travellers. By constructing a parallel set of 88 locations optimised for contemporary travel photography and personal discovery, Dentsu translated an existing cultural asset into a format accessible to audiences who might never undertake the spiritual circuit. In the Travel and Leisure category, competitors including Osaka's Kansai Airports group, per Kansai-Airports Co Jp, and Narita International Airport, per narita-airport.jp, had established marketing presences anchored to international connectivity and urban access. Neohenro countered with terrain those larger airports cannot occupy: deep regional identity, unhurried discovery, and the specific textures of Shikoku's landscape.
Neohenro is built around a single film asset that carries the full weight of the campaign's emotional and conceptual ambitions. Creative director Yoshimitsu Sawamoto of Dentsu shaped the overall vision, with copywriting by Chihiro Kato and art direction by Sho Tsujioka, both of Dentsu, according to clapboard.com. The production was executed by Geek Pictures, with producer Naoyasu Tanimura and production manager Mizuho Takei leading the physical production, per clapboard.com.
The film follows the structural logic of the Ohenro pilgrimage itself, moving sequentially through Shikoku's four prefectures — Kagawa, Tokushima, Kochi, and Ehime — in a format takamatsu-airport.com describes as a sequential route version, rendered in the original title as 順打ちver., the traditional clockwise order of completing the pilgrimage. This structural fidelity to the source material is not incidental. It positions the film as a document of discovery rather than a promotional showreel, lending the imagery a sense of earned sequence that differentiates it from conventional destination advertising.
The visual strategy prioritises the photogenic quality of each location, a deliberate bridge between the cinematic register of the film and the Instagram-native context in which the campaign also lived. Planner Naoya Kudo and PR planner Naoya Tanimoto of Dentsu Public Relations, per clapboard.com, ensured the campaign architecture connected across earned, owned, and social channels. Agency producer Daiki Mori of Dentsu West Japan and creative producer Koji Wada of Dentsu oversaw the production pipeline, with account direction handled by Noriko Matsuura of Dentsu West Japan, according to clapboard.com. The result is a campaign that functions simultaneously as a short film, a social media content library, and a practical travel guide — three registers that rarely coexist as cleanly as they do in Neohenro's execution within the Japan Travel and Leisure category.
No verified third-party performance data for the Neohenro campaign is publicly available. Audience reach figures, video view counts, and conversion metrics have not been released by Takamatsu Airport or Dentsu in any publicly documented form. What can be assessed is the campaign's structural effectiveness — the degree to which its design creates conditions for durable impact.
Neohenro earns a Clapboard Score of 70 out of 100. The campaign's primary strength lies in its conceptual architecture. By anchoring a modern travel platform to one of Japan's most deeply embedded cultural frameworks — the 88-temple Shikoku pilgrimage — Dentsu created a campaign with inherent memorability and clear organisational logic. The 88-location structure gives the Neo Shikoku Pilgrimage an openness that sustains ongoing content production beyond a single campaign moment, functioning more as a platform than a one-time activation.
The multi-channel deployment across film, YouTube, Instagram, and the official website reflects sound distribution thinking for 2018, particularly given the visual currency of the 88-location format on image-led platforms. The strategic timing — launching days before Takamatsu Airport's April 1, 2018 privatisation — also demonstrates an understanding of how communications can frame institutional change rather than simply accompany it.
Where the campaign faces structural limits is in measurability and reach amplification. A single film asset, however well crafted, constrains the campaign's ability to sustain attention across the extended consideration cycles typical of inbound travel planning in Japan. The absence of documented paid media or influencer activation also leaves the campaign's organic distribution dependent on an audience already predisposed to seek out Takamatsu Airport and Shikoku content — a limitation that the Clapboard Score reflects.
Neohenro is a 2018 film and social media campaign created by Dentsu for Takamatsu Airport in Japan. It reinterprets the traditional 88-temple Shikoku pilgrimage by identifying 88 photogenic locations across Kagawa, Tokushima, Kochi, and Ehime, promoting the region to contemporary travellers through film, Instagram, and YouTube.
Takamatsu Airport launched Neohenro on March 27, 2018, five days before its privatisation on April 1, 2018. The campaign was designed to reposition the airport as Shikoku's cultural gateway at the precise moment its commercial identity was being restructured, according to takamatsu-airport.com.
Dentsu created the Neohenro campaign. Creative direction was led by Yoshimitsu Sawamoto of Dentsu, with copywriting by Chihiro Kato, art direction by Sho Tsujioka, and production by Geek Pictures. The full team spanned Dentsu, Dentsu West Japan, Dentsu Public Relations, and Geek Pictures, per clapboard.com.
The Neo Shikoku Pilgrimage maps 88 photogenic locations across Shikoku's four prefectures, mirroring the structure of the traditional 88-temple Ohenro circuit. Each location was chosen for its visual and experiential appeal to contemporary leisure travellers rather than its religious significance, creating a modern parallel to Japan's most iconic pilgrimage.
Neohenro distributed content across Takamatsu Airport's official YouTube channel, website, and Instagram account, according to takamatsu-airport.com. The Instagram campaign launched on March 19, 2018, preceding the main film release on April 1, 2018, allowing the social platform to build anticipation for the long-form film asset.
Neohenro distinguishes itself from competitors including Kansai Airports and Narita International Airport by anchoring its positioning in deep regional cultural identity rather than connectivity or urban access. Its 88-location platform structure gives Takamatsu Airport a durable creative framework unavailable to larger, internationally focused Japanese airports.
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