Space for Worship in East Asia

Dear Colleagues, 

This Issue focuses on the spaces for worship in East Asia. Among various human activities, worshiping is the one that has brought the greatest transformations to their living environments, being it for their deceased ancestors through folk beliefs or holy divinities in institutionalized religions. In traditional East Asian settlements, the center of a village was often a clan shrine, and to honor Gods and Buddhas, mountains were carved and cities reshaped. Religious histories of East Asia are rich and complicated, intertwined with local cultures, engaged with global events, and creating worshiping spaces that have become a significant part of the world heritage in the built environments.

In this Special Issue, we welcome new scholarships on East Asian worshiping space in all areas and from any religious backgrounds, Buddhism, Confucian, Daoism, Shintoism, Islam, Christianity, and various folk and shamanistic practices. Architecture is a comprehensive expression of, and the most visible contributors to, the identity of a place, religious, cultural, and regional. A mosque in Xi’an shares more formal and structural common features with a local Buddhist temple than with a mosque in Xinjiang. Buddhist temples in Japan may contain thatch-roofed Shinto shrines while those in China feature halls for worshipping the Martial God Guandi. Such a reality makes it more revealing for a focus of subject on space for worship than architecture of a specific religion.

In addition to studies on such conventional fields as Buddhist, Daoist, or Shinto architecture, we encourage new research with a comparative methodology or on worshiping spaces beyond the well-established religious compartments. Space for worship here is broadly defined, including not only architecture and the formal, structural, functional, and ritual aspects associated with it, but also painting, sculpture, landscape, and urban environment. Worshiping space also does not have to be physical. It can be social, psychological, conceptual, and even literary. With this Special Issue, we aim to understand and put under scrutiny the space for worship in East Asia from different angles and through interdisciplinary perspectives.

Dr. Shuishan Yu
Dr. Aibin Yan
Guest Editors

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