Sacrum w krajobrazie Japonii

Sacred sites cross the Japanese landscape

Summary: The aim of the paper is to bring closer the extraordinary religion of Shinto, which never spread outside the Japanese islands, as well as the Japanese version of Buddhism - as peculiar cultural "endemic" phenomena. The paper discusses the birth of Shintoism as a natural religion, the relationship between Shinto and Buddhism, characteristics of Shinto as the national religion of the Japanese, and analyzes Shinto as the basis for the Japanese identity. The paper discusses the relationship between the religion and the identity of the inhabitants of Japan, which is manifested in the landscape of the Japanese islands through architecture, rituals and everyday rites. The paper also discusses the case study of Kyoto. Due to the author's particular interest in that historic city, the most eminent examples of sacred architecture in the city are discussed. The ubiquity of traditional sacred sites in a very modern large urban space is analyzed, as is the important role of religion in everyday life of the Japanese, where the realms of the sacred and the profane permeate each other and are only separated by a fragile intangible boundary. The paper is based on its author's personal observations and conversations during her trip across Honshu and Sikoku as part of a Polish-Japanese research project in 2008-2009: A Comparative Study of the Preservation and Utilization of the Historic Cities of Kyoto, Kanazawa, Krakow and Warsaw, as well as on an extensive collection of reference books acquired while carrying out the objectives of the project.

Peregrinus Cracoviensis, 2011, z. 22, s. 267-288.

Instytut Geografii i Gospodarki Przestrzennej UJ

ISSN 1425-1922

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