ABSTRACT
Nature is ‘natural’ only when it is humanized to enhance human existence and relationships. Nature gives human benefits as well as damage. There is nothing a human can do about what nature does, but to fear and be awed by it. At the level of the cultural model of nature, there was a clear indication about the centrality of human intervention to ‘naturalize’ nature. Specifically, ethnographic information gives initial, overall insights into relevant information about the informants’ cultural model of nature. Food producers work with nature to establish both their livelihoods and personal meaning by humanizing it. Using the cultural model works as a buffer against, and around which to circumvent, the perceived and real harms of raw and untamed nature. The Ezo, considered and named ‘barbarians,’ who inhabited northern Japan, and the Burakumin, descendants of ‘outcast’ classes during pre-modern Japan, are cases in point.
