Attitudes toward Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 468

the modern practice of going to the mountains for sport and recreation actually had
its birth in China. The following poem, composed in the fifth century, reflects this early
shift in views of mountains:
In the mountains all is pure, all is calm;
All complication is cut off.
Rare are they who know to listen;
Happy they who possess wisdom.
If the cold wind stings and bothers you,
Sit in the sun: it is always warm there.
Its hot rays burn like flames,
While, opposite, in the shade, all is frost and snow.
One pauses on ledges, one climbs to the foot of high clouds;
One sits in the depths of a gorge, one passes windy grottos.
Here is the realm of harmony and joy,
Where the past and the present become eternal.
(BERNBAUM 1997: 27)
Perhaps it is only natural, given East Asian sentiments toward mountains, that moun-
tains should occupy a dominant position in their art. The very term for landscape in
Chinese is Shan Shui, literally “mountains and water.” Painting is considered a branch
of calligraphy; the Chinese character for mountain ill is a pictorial representation of a
mountain (DeSilva 1967), and the characters for a hermit or Taoist immortal “fill are
those of a man (person) and a mountain. The mountain motif appears on the earliest
known Chinese pottery and stone carvings, and in landscape paintings from the Han
Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) onward (DeSilva 1967).
The Japanese also view mountains as symbols of divine beauty and power. The use
of stones to represent mountains is an ancient art form practiced in both Chinese and
Japanese gardens. The culmination of this is what the Japanese call Iskiyarna: A nat-
ural stone about 15 cm (6 in.) high is placed vertically on a small wooden base. This
simple piece of nature sculpture, a mountain landscape in miniature, is kept inside the
house on a shelf or table, and often has great value and meaning to its owner. Japan has
many sacred mountains, of which Fuji is perhaps the most famous. Up to 300,000 people
climb the mountain each year during the July-August climbing season; it is still climbed
annually by members of Fuji devotional sects as a sacred pilgrimage. When a commer-
cial proposal was made for constructing a funicular railway to the summit, the Japanese
angrily rejected the idea as a desecration of the holy mountain (Fickeler 1962). Until
the mid-nineteenth century, perhaps the most widespread form of religion in Japanese
village life was Shugendo, a blend of Buddhism and Shintoism based on the practice of
climbing mountains as a metaphor for following the Buddhist path to enlightenment and
acquiring spiritual powers. Practitioners of this religion are called yamabushi, meaning
“those who lie down (or sleep) in mountains” (Fig. 9.2). Japanese also revere many of