Shrine Settings in Japan as Life-cultural Landscape with Diverse Relations to Nature

Settings of traditional shrines and their Surroundings are seemed to be one of the typical life-cultural designs realized on land in urban or rural area in Japan. It can be said that those settings are some reflections of nature-oriented cosmology established in long term history of ordinary people. Examining those settings and making clear their characteristics could be a significant issue of landscape architecture for discussing sustainable ways of urbanism or regional development. In this paper, the author examined and discussed the shrine settings from a view point of their spatial relation with surrounding water system. Based on the surveys on more than 60 local shrines in northern area of Tokyo, it was revealed that many shrines have strong connections to surrounding waters or low lands with downward-oriented worshipping to nature instead of upward-oriented worshipping well known as general location of shrine. It is believed that the result shows the diversity of landscape settings of shrines as historical life-culture, and the varieties has to be conserved or restored in various ways of urban design or regional planning.