nature, concept of
The basic, etymological meaning of the Japanese word shine, which is used to translate the English word "nature," is the power of spontaneous self-development and what results from that power. The Chinese characters for the Japanese term shine literally mean "from itself thus it is." It expresses a mode of being rather than the existence or "nature" of objects in the natural order.
The term shine, if understood as a general expression encompassing heaven and earth, including mountains, water, animals, and plants, cannot be found in ancient Japanese. This was not due to any lack of a capacity for abstract thought on the part of the Japanese people in ancient times, but because their chief concern was to recognize each and every phenomenon as a manifestation of the KAMI (god or gods) behind it. It was hard for them to think of the ever-flowing wind and the immovable mountains as all belonging to the same general classification of nature. It is safe to say that the "articulated" thought process of the Japanese (which is reflected in their polytheism) tied up with their aesthetic sensibility to separate the universe into its elements and, consequently, to forestall simplified generalizations about it. If we insist, however, on finding generic terms for nature in the ancient literature, we can offer comprehensive expressions like ametsuchi (heaven and earth) and ikitoshi ikeromono (living things).