Landscape assessment of a 100-year-old sacred forest within a shrine using geotagged visitor employed photography

The forest of Meiji-Jingu shrine was afforested 100 years ago with the aim of creating a sublime forest one century later. In this study, we conducted a visual landscape assessment to explore whether the forest had reached sublime forest status. Specifically, the spatial condition of the forest associated with sublimity and landscape types that made visitors feel sublime were assessed using a combination of data collected from geotagged visitor employed photography and questionnaires. We performed a hotspot analysis with Getis-Ord Gi* statistics and the average nearest neighbor method to identify the landscape types and their characteristics that provided a sense of sublimity, and a content analysis and semantic differential method were employed to determine how current visitors perceived the forest of Meiji-Jingu. The main findings were as follows: (1) current visitors evaluated the forest as sublime; (2) tree height and a large trunk were the most important features contributing to sublimity; (3) the vicinity of the worship hall, the torii at Harajuku gate, and the bridge were identified as hotspots; and (4) while the forest was identified as a sublime landscape type, the worship hall and torii were rated as the most sublime by visitors. This framework for landscape assessments should be useful for the future creation and conservation of high quality forested landscapes.