Abstract
Japan and Russia have deeply rooted cultural traditions regarding natural landscape appreciation, share a common border, and have areas with similar natural environments. They differ, however, in cultural, historical, and economic aspects. The purpose of this study was to reveal the similarities and differences between Russian and Japanese respondents regarding the visual and emotional evaluation of landscapes based on ethno-cultural and regional differences. We asked respondents at universities in Russia (Moscow, Irkutsk, and Kamchatka) and Japan (Hokkaido, Chiba, and Miyazaki) to group and rate 70 landscape images. Unlike theoretical concepts that explain landscape preferences within an evolutionary framework or according to individual and cultural differences, we found that these factors interact in more complicated ways. Cultural traditions and features of the natural environment that were familiar to respondents influenced their visual perception and aesthetic evaluation of landscape. Russian respondents seemed more emotional while Japanese respondents tended to be more restrained in their assessments. However, there was a strong correlation between their estimates of landscape attractiveness, which might confirm the existence of universal human concepts of landscape aesthetics. The most attractive for both Russian and Japanese respondents were waterfalls, mountains, and lakes; waterless plains were the least attractive. At the same time, we found cross-cultural differences in assessing seacoasts, rivers, forests, and swampy plains. There was practically no correlation between Russian and Japanese respondents in their appreciation of exotic/familiar landscapes. For the Russian respondents, the most exotic landscapes were also the most attractive, although we did not observe such a tendency for the Japanese. All respondents appreciated certain familiar landscapes that were symbols of native nature as very attractive. Unlike ‘geoscientific’ landscape classifications, in the visual and emotional grouping of landscapes, the most important feature appeared to be the presence/absence of water and the type of water basin (river, lake, and sea); for Russian respondents (especially Muscovites), topography was also important, while the Japanese respondents mostly used visual and seasonal characteristics in their classifications. All Japanese respondents assessed the attractiveness and exoticism of landscapes almost identically, while there were some differences among Russian respondents from different regions.
Highlights
Current urbanization and economic development that lead to increases in industrial, transport, agricultural, recreational, and other man-made loadings on our natural environment threaten natural landscapes at different levels, from local to global
Visual and emotional grouping of landscapes Using hierarchical agglomerative clustering of the photographs, we obtained (1) six visual and emotional landscape classifications composed by each group of respondents and (2) a general visual and emotional landscape classification that comprises the ‘collective’ opinion of the Russian and Japanese respondents
The majority of respondents grouped them by the presence or absence of water in the picture and interpreted some images with water as ‘swampy plains’ or ‘lowland rivers’ and those without visible water as ‘waterless plains.’. This new set of landscapes identified by respondents was used as a legend for the resulting graphs showing the evaluation of attractiveness and exoticism
Summary
Current urbanization and economic development that lead to increases in industrial, transport, agricultural, recreational, and other man-made loadings on our natural environment threaten natural landscapes at different levels, from local to global. Some researchers agree that people from various distinctive cultures prefer natural environments to built or otherwise human-influenced ones (e.g., Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Yang and Kaplan 1990; Ulrich 1993; van den Berg et al 2003). Several studies conclude that the similarities in the visual evaluation of landscapes surpass the differences across cultures as well as smaller groups (Purcell et al 1994; Herzog et al 2003; Staats and Hartig 2004). Some authors interpret these similarities as supporting an evolutionary theory of human landscape preferences (Appleton 1975; Orians 1986; Kaplan 2001). Backhaus (2011) concludes that there is no such thing as an absolute perspective on landscapes; people can perceive the same landscape in different ways
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