Recent Trends in the Geography of Religion in Japan - Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior - page 2

The geography of religion also exists as a subfi eld of religious studies. Inoue
( 2002 ) put religious studies into two classes: the fi rst class includes arguments about
the religious essence, the philosophy, and phenomenology of religion. The second
class describes the history, psychology, and sociology of religion. Although the
geography of religion fi ts with the second class, students of religion have given little
attention to geography. Inoue ( 2002 ) comments ironically, “There is a fi eld called
the geography of religion, which has few researchers in Japan.” Ishida ( 1989 ) writes
“… the geography of religion is a subfi eld of religious studies that aims to clarify
the correlation of religion and the natural environment.” Ishida ( 1989 ) continued
that the geography of religion complements other aspects of religious studies and
wrote “An understanding of religion will turn more positive by clarifying the rela-
tion between natural conditions and religion.” Researchers do not seem to consider
that geography is an essential element of religious phenomenon, and the geography
of religion has been regarded as an auxiliary aim of religious studies.
In recent years, Japanese geographers have published many papers on the geog-
raphy of religion. In my previous studies (Matsui 1993 , 2003 ), I classifi ed the geog-
raphy of religion into four areas. (1) Fudo and the natural environment, (2) the
cultural landscape and religion, (3) pilgrimage, and (4) the distribution, diffusion,
and spatial structure of religion. Although I think this framework is fundamentally
effective, Oda ( 2002 ) considers a new framework would be useful. This chapter will
describe the themes in the study of religion by Japanese geographers since 1990 and
comment on the future directions for the fi eld over the next 10 years. To begin, let
me draw attention to four studies: Iwahana ( 2003 ) studied the Zonal Structure of
Dewa Mountain faith; Matsui ( 2003 ) wrote about the religious space in Japanese
places of public worship, and Tanaka ( 2004 ) and Mori ( 2005a ) examined modern
pilgrimage routes.
Iwahana ( 2003 ) showed that the catchment area of the Dewa Mountain faith is
structured into three concentric circles. The innermost sacred area surrounds the top
of the mountain. This fi rst sacred area is surrounded by a semi-sacred area, and
believers live in the third, outer-residential zone. Iwahana demonstrated that the
characteristics of each area were based on folklore tradition.
Religious belief associated with mountains has been thoroughly studied. Matsui
( 2003 ) tried to clarify regional differences in the mode of popular religious beliefs.
Whereas mountain religions have a distinct spatial structure, popular religions, such
as the Inari and the thunder faiths, have no clear boundary or clear adherents. Thus,
it is diffi cult to defi ne the characteristics of the worship catchment area for these
religions.
Tanaka ( 2004 ) used travelers' journals to identify the decisions that created pil-
grimage routes and provided detailed descriptions of the mode of pilgrimage,
including the important Saikoku pilgrimage in western Japan. Whereas Tanaka's
study was conducted using historical geography methods, Mori ( 2005a ) approached
the Shikoku pilgrimage (around the island of Shikoku) from a cultural geography
viewpoint. Mori takes a social constructionist position, and he argues that the
Shikoku pilgrimage was reconstructed one hundred years after the Meiji Restoration
and is thus a cultural phenomenon.