At a basic level, this article considers the construction of social scientific theory. In particular, drawing from the ideas of Taleb (2007), I examine the place of outliers, or "black swans," in the analysis of a long-standing and evolving social system. Pondering the role of outliers with respect to Japan\u27s most famous pilgrimage, the Shikoku henro, I argue that rare behaviors and/or beliefs either cause pilgrimage theories to fail outright or force descriptions to become so open-ended and vague that they no longer fulfill the function of reductive analysis. I conclude that historical methodologies, though limited in producing a more niversal description, are better suited to preserve the diversity, even extremity, found with respect to pilgrimage
