On Mountain Spirituality: The Secularization and Resacralization of Mountains

In this article I analyze some aspects of the form of spirituality that can be found both in the Japanese tradition of mountain worship and in modern-day mountaineering as practiced in Japan and western countries. Exploring the reasons why people have felt drawn to mountains throughout history, I compare traditional mountain worship and the modern practice of mountain climbing. To do so, I discuss examples taken from Western and Japanese literature on mountains. Based on the results of this investigation, I describe how mountains were secularized, resacralized and spiritualized. I also examine religious and spiritual aspects of mountaineering and the recent general popularity of spirituality in various fields including the public sphere, the study of gender, the study of minorities and death-and-life studies.論文/Article