ABSTRACT
The major point of this paper is that one of the best ways to understand the Japanese attitude or attitudes to nature is to put them within the framework of the Japanese ontological conceptions. We have of course to bear in mind that these conceptions have, especially in their more sophisticated foundations, never been static, but at the same time distinct core assumptions seem to have been prevalent in many sectors of Japanese society through many historical periods. The paper will analyse some of the basic ontological conceptions, especially the ways in which the relations between what in western parlance is called nature and culture or between the transcendent and mundane realms have been constructed in Japanese society; and how the conceptions have changed the attitude to nature and influenced different patterns of behaviour.
