As the location of the mausoleum where the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate is enshrined, the registered sites played an important historical role in underpinning the political structures of the Edo Period. Daimyo from all over Japan came to Nikko to worship at the shrines and temples, which were also visited by successive shoguns themselves, by envoys dispatched from the imperial court in Kyoto, and by parties of diplomatic envoys sent from Korea. In addition, the wooded area in the vicinity of the building complex is regarded as sacred in the beliefs relating to the mountain worship in Nikko. This is accordingly an irreplaceable site forming a cultural landscape in which nature is at one with the shrine buildings.