Image of the Forest in Europe
Unfortunately, however, the forest has ceased to be a sacred
place for the vast majority of Europeans. In the ancient Europe
before Christianity, the Germanic race and the Celtic race hunted
in deep forests and practiced the 'religion of the forest', revering
deities that they believed to live in the forest. But when they
were christianized after the Roman conquest, the forest was made
into an abominable place where evil spirits or fearful wild animals
like wolves were thought to live. In the mediaeval ages, cities
and farm villages under the control of the Christian church represented
a part of the holy world of God, that is distinct from surrounding
natural environments such as the dark, wild places which should
have been conquered and controlled by the glory of God.
Robert Harrison, Professor of Stanford University, writes in
his book, The Forest-Shadow of Civilization (Published by Chicago
University Publishing Department in 1992) that in western civilization,
from ancient Greece and Rome to the present day, the image of
the forest as a chaotic, negative place has persisted in literature,
philosophy and the arts as the shadow of civilization-as-cosmos.
Augustin Berque, a French scholar who specializes in cultural
geography, writes in his book, Le sauvage et l'artifice -Les japonais
devant la nature (Editions Gallimard, Paris,1986)that Japanese
traditional culture shows a tendency of 'physicophily' having
strong affinity towards the forest and surrounding nature m general,
and this phenomenon is totally opposite to the Christian tradition.
He points out that Christian culture is traditionally 'physicophobiac'.
It formed the concept that both natural environments and human
beings exist in this world as evil objects. Therefore, they should
be conquared, tamed, and evangelized by Christianity.
So, it was impossible for the Westerners, whose way of thinking
was based on Christian concepts, to consider the natural landscape
or the forest to be the sacred places. For them, nature was an
object to which the glorious order of God should be introduced
by hewing off the forest, building churches, and transforming
the wilderness into orderly gardens of God.
The Grove of the Village Shrine
 In
Japan, natural environments such as steep mountains, deep valleys,
forests, Iandscapes and even planted forests were considered to
be sacred places where deities or divine spirits dwell. Accordingly
shrines are to be surrounded by a grove, or even the grove itself
was considered to be the shrine as a sacred place  for
the village. This is because the village shrine was originally
considered to be a place for the deity to occasionally visit,
travelling from its original place in deep mountains or valleys,
and to stay for some time.
A Spanish philosopher, Diez del Corral, writes about this in
his book, A Journey Through Asia (Del Nuevo Al Viejo Mundo, Revista
De Occidente, Madrid, 1967), especially in the chapter titled
"The Grove of the Village Shrine". He writes;-
The most impressive sight repeated in every place throughout
the breadth of this country is nothing other than union of forest
and shrine... Almost as though the Japanese 'kami' is just a drop
coalesced from the sacred flow, teeming with all of nature. The
Japanese shrine is the most compressed architectural expression
of the forest as the home of the sacred..
This is precisely the essence of the shrine, and it is the holy
place of Shinto, evoking a nostalgic feeling for many Japanese
towards their own home or country.
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