How Culture Shapes Landscape: From Japanese Gardens to Russian Estates

This article identifies and compares the mechanisms by which culture shapes landscape, using the Japanese garden and the Russian estate as case studies. It argues that cultural landscape is not a passive reflection of mentality but an active tool for its construction. Both phenomena, despite their external opposite-ness, use a similar mechanism: through the organization of space, they materialize the key philosophical categories of their culture (wabi-sabi / idyll) and offer a person a strictly defined scenario of behavior (contemplation / social activity), thereby forming a corresponding type of worldview and social identity. The study integrates comparative and semiotic analysis, phenomenology, and an ecological approach. A case study of the Kuskovo estate illustrates the semiotic saturation of the Russian estate landscape.