Spatial Structure of Japanese Religion - Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior - page 37

Chapter 3
Spatial Structure of Japanese Religion

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to clarify regional divisions in the catchment
area of religion of Japanese Shintoism through analyzing distributions of some kinds
of believers. I discuss two case studies; Kasama inari Shirne and Kanamura Shrine.
As for the catchment area of Kasama Shrine, it consists of three zonal areas. The
fi rst area (0-50 km zone) is the distribution of donoers of agricultural products. The
second area (50-150 km zone) has denser distribution of all the indexwa than
the other two areas. There are few worshippers and no donors in the third area
(150-800 km zone). As for the Kanamura Shrine, religious associations (ko) do not
function as autonomous religious groups and are dependent upon other religious or
administrative organizations in the inner area. However, there are few individual
believers in the outer area, it has their own managers and members, and function
independently of the ujiko, or other, religious organizations. It is cleared that people
in this area worshipped the Kanamura Shrine not as the tutelary deity but as a
removed effi cacious deity.

Keywords Believers • Catchment area • Religious association • Zonal structure

3.1 Characteristics of the Kasama Inari Belief Area

3.1.1 Introduction

I selected the Kasama Inari Shrine (referred to as Kasama Inari below) (Fig. 3.1 ) in
Ibaraki to classify belief types using the geographical distribution of the believers.
These data help identify the regional differences of attributes in the status and
density of believers, worshipers, dedicators, and the disseminators of branch
shrines (Fig. 3.2 ). In Chap. 1, I explained how the geography of religion shows
how beliefs can be distributed around a center point. This study should provide
interesting regional information, yet the fi eld has not accumulated valuable results.