• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.80-92
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• 2021

Mount Tai, with an elevation of 1,532 meters, has a reputation as 'The Most Revered of the Five Sacred Mountains(五嶽獨尊)', despite not being the highest mountain in China. The literati of the past dynasties created a multitude of works based on the landscape of Mount Tai. Traditional literature is a part of national culture that directly reflects the national characteristics and styles, and is an important part of humanities, which can be linked to landscapes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the landscape elements and characteristics of Mount Tai by analyzing the landscape types and elements and the Kernel Density, Mean Center and Standard Deviational Ellipse of the landscape elements appearing in the representative poems of traditional literature. The research results of this study are summarized as follows. First, Mount Tai is a scenic spot dominated by human activities, different from the natural landscape of prior research related to scenic spots. Second, among the landscape elements of Mount Tai, the importance of "sunrise", "cyan", "towering" and "majestic", "Divine Dragon" is confirmed, symbolizing the hope, brightness, vitality, national stability and prosperity represented by Mount Tai, which can explain the leadership position of Mount Tai. Third, it can be found from the poems about Mount Tai that various landscape elements were embodied in belief (the behavior of gods or emperors) in the Pre-Qin, Sui and Tang dynasties, while in modern times, landscape elements are shown by action (climbing and looking far into distance), so it can be said that the landscape elements have changed from belief landscapes to experience landscapes. Fourth, the spatial distribution of landscape elements in the past dynasties was widely distributed in the Daiding(岱頂). Approaching the modern times, the mean center moved from south outside of Mount Tai to the summit of Mount Tai, and the spatial distribution changed from a widely scattered distribution to narrow linear distribution centered on Mount Tai. The present study is of great significance to provide key factors or spaces for future landscape protection and restoration of Mount Tai.