This page groups sacred sites by whether UNESCO has formally recognized them. Wikipedia notes elsewhere that cultural traditions can be "recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity," the same kind of international listing that applies to World Heritage sites. Browsing by UNESCO status lets a visitor see which sacred sites carry that international recognition and which do not.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingShrines at which kami are enshrined, together with the mountains, forests, rocks and waterfalls treated as their dwelling-places. What counts as a Shinto site is not stable across time: the Meiji state's separation of kami from buddhas in 1868 broke apart institutions that had been combined for roughly a thousand years, and many places now classed as Shinto were not so classed before it. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryContested. Whether "Shinto" names a continuous religion or a category assembled in the modern period out of older and more various kami worship is disputed; on the second reading, a number of the places in this group were not Shinto sites before the nineteenth century. 3 Learn More
The sacred sites of Shinto
This group holds the sacred sites of Shinto, the shrines (jinja) where the kami are enshrined and worshipped, together with sacred mountains, forests and natural features held to be dwelling-places of the divine. The shrine, marked by its torii gate, is the characteristic Shinto sacred place.
The browser will find the great shrines of Japan and the sacred natural sites of the tradition. The entries describe each site's enshrined kami and its place in Japanese religious life.
UNESCO World Heritage Status
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Shinto: A History
3. A New History of Shinto
John Breen and Mark Teeuwen, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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