ABSTRACT
In prewar Japan, despite severe resource limitations and privation, people were able to achieve a way of life conductive to spiritual affluence by being attuned to nature. Before modernization, our way of life was relatively inconvenient. Then, in the period bracketing the Second World War, there was a transformation in how the Japanese lived. Most elderly people around 90 years of age at the time of the interview attested that prewar life did offer spiritual affluence. After the war, as modern conveniences were introduced, the type of spiritual affluence that existed before the war was lost; at the same time, the environmental impact of Japan's way of life grew. The chapter shows that transition in depth. The elements of a way of life that provides spiritual affluence are integrated within a natural cycle. So, if the natural cycle breaks down, it portends the possible loss of spiritual affluence.
