Why the dates in your goshuincho are out of order, and how to keep visit-date order without redoing the book

This article is about one situation: the dates inside a goshuincho running back and forth instead of in order. It does not go into how to choose a goshuincho, or the tools for pasting a kakioki in.

Should you fix a goshuincho whose dates are out of order?

There is no need to. There is no nationwide rule that the pages of a book must follow visit-date order, and dates fall out of order for one of the reasons in the next section, as a matter of course.

If you want to look back in visit-date order, the reliable way is not to work on the book but to keep a list outside it with the book, the page and the visit date. The book stays as it was when you received each goshuin, and the list can be sorted by visit date or by page order.

Four common reasons the dates fall out of order

Most cases come down to one of these four. Once you know which one applies to your book, it is easier to decide how to build the list.

1. You pasted a kakioki in afterwards. A kakioki is a goshuin written on a sheet of paper before your visit. You usually paste it in once you are home, so its place in the book follows the order you pasted, not the order you visited. Let a few pile up and paste them together, and the dates jump by that much more. Why goshuin come on paper is covered in "Why your goshuin came on a loose sheet of paper".
2. You took a different goshuincho on a different day. You keep separate books for shrines and for temples, you took a small book on a trip, or you forgot your book that day and received a kakioki — goshuin from days like these do not continue the usual book.
3. A page you had left empty was written on later. What gets written on is the page you open when you hand the book over. A later goshuin can end up on a page you had kept empty, for instance for a goshuin written across a spread.
4. Some goshuin carry no date. In some forms, such as the nōkyōchō carried around a pilgrimage, the brushwork leaves the visit date out (what each pilgrimage or temple does differs). With no date, you cannot infer the order from the goshuin either side. How to keep the dates of stacked seals is covered in "A nokyocho carries no date".

Before you rearrange anything: no re-pasting, no swapping pages

We would not peel a pasted kakioki off to paste it again. Washi and hanshi paper can lift at the surface along with the glue as you peel, and once the brushwork or the red seal on top is damaged, it cannot be put back.

An accordion book is one long sheet folded up, so its pages cannot be swapped at all. In a stitched book, undoing the thread to reorder the sheets is bookbinding work.

The order of the pages is itself a trace of when, in which book and in what form you received each goshuin. If anything is to be corrected, correct the list, and leave the book as it is — that is the handling that costs you least.

Make a visit-date list outside the book

The list needs four columns: book, page, visit date, and the shrine or temple. Add a mark for kakioki pasted in afterwards, and you can tell which goshuin the pages either side cannot be used to date.

Whatever you use, decide first how pages are counted (a spread as 1, or a single face as 1) and keep it the same in every book. Choosing the columns for a spreadsheet is covered in "Keeping goshuin in a spreadsheet: the columns to use", and giving your books running numbers in "When your goshuincho multiply".

When some goshuin have no known visit date

A date you do not know still gets an estimated date and goes in the same order. Leave it blank and push it to the end, and it becomes hard to find when you go back to look into it. Write down that it is an estimate, and what it rests on (the capture date of a photo, the pages either side), in a separate column or a note.

The pages either side give you a clue to the visit date in a book you filled in order, but not for a page you pasted a kakioki onto later. How to follow the clues is in "When was this goshuin?", and what to do with a kakioki whose date is blank is in "The date on your kakioki goshuin is blank. Do you write it in yourself?".

In the app we make

In Goshuin Ledger, the app we make, the order within a book and the visit-date order are held separately. Within a book, entries follow page order, and the Up and Down buttons swap pages, so you can keep the same order as the book in your hands. In “Your records” on the Records tab, goshuin are listed by visit date, Newest first or Oldest first, so you can look back in visit-date order without moving anything in the book.

• Importing a photo puts its capture date in as the starting visit date. A photo taken afterwards has a capture date later than the visit, so correct it to the date written on the goshuin before you add it to a book.
• You can note how each goshuin was given — written in the book or pre-written. It is not a ranking; it is a marker for the goshuin whose neighbouring pages cannot be used to date them.

The first book needs no purchase and takes as many records as you like, and adding imported photos to a book one at a time needs none either. A second book and beyond, and adding two or more photos to a book at once, come with the one-time Ledger Full purchase; the range it covers is set out in the pricing section, and the App Store shows the current price.

The whole procedure for sorting out a pile of photos is in "Goshuin photos piled up on your phone: organise them by place, visit date and book".