Rice and the Philosophy of Coexistence

This chapter explores how rice cultivation, mythology, and personal experience reveal a deeper Japanese worldview: a philosophy of coexistence between humans, nature, and the many spirits believed to inhabit the world.

For the Japanese people, rice has always been something special.

There is a myth that rice was brought down from heaven.

According to Japanese mythology, the sun goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami cultivated rice in the heavenly realm.

She then sent her grandson Ninigi-no-Mikoto to the earth and entrusted him with bringing rice to humanity.

For this reason, rice has never been regarded simply as a crop created by human beings.

Many Japanese people have believe that rice was a gift from the spirits.

Because of this belief, rituals of gratitude were always performed before planting rice and after harvesting it.

Rice was offered to the spirits as a sign of thanks.

In this mythological worldview, the Kunitsu-kami, the spirits of the land, prepared the earth itself, while the Amatsu-kami, the heavenly spirits, brought rice cultivation.

Together, these spirits worked to make the earthly world prosperous.

There is another myth in which a spirit dies, and from its body various foods are born.

In this story, rice and other grains originate from the body of a spirit.

This expresses the idea that rice is not merely food but something received from the spirits — in a sense, even the spirit itself.

In many rituals, rice and food are first offered to the spirits, and then people eat the offerings together.

By sharing the food in this way, people believe they become united with the spirits.

I myself have been cultivating rice for ten years.

While observing rice plants, I began to notice something interesting.

Rice does not seem to compete with other plants.

Especially underground, where roots spread through the soil, rice does not struggle aggressively against neighboring plants.

Instead, it appears to coexist with them.

Because of this nature, if we want rice to grow large and produce abundant grain, humans must remove the surrounding weeds.

As I watched this process, I felt that rice resembles the character of the Japanese people who eat it.

Japanese people tend not to push others aside in order to stand out.

Instead, they often prefer harmony and cooperation with those around them.

I began to wonder whether this temperament might be related to the rice that has sustained Japanese life for centuries.

Perhaps the nature of what we eat influences the nature of the beings who eat it.

If rice truly came from the spirits, then perhaps rice carries within it a message about how human beings can live peacefully on this earth.

Thinking about it this way feels deeply mysterious.

Earlier I mentioned the myth that heavenly spirits brought rice to the earth.

But this raises another question.

Were human beings themselves originally born from the earth?

Japanese mythology does not clearly state the answer.

However, I sometimes feel that humans may not originally belong to this planet.

This is not something that can be explained logically.

It is simply an intuition.

Why must we eat every day?

Why must we sleep?

Can anyone explain this completely?

Scientists would say that eating maintains the body and sleeping allows the body to rest.

But if human beings were truly born from the earth and were simply part of it, perhaps we would be able to exist without eating or sleeping — like plants.

Plants appear to be truly native to the earth.

They can exist simply by standing on the ground.

Plants are also connected to one another as part of the earth itself.

They seem to share a network of knowledge.

The grass in my garden knows how the oak tree in your garden feels today.

Human beings, in contrast, have been trying to construct something similar to that plant network outside their own bodies.

The internet is one example.

Yet human beings still struggle to understand the earth itself.

Do you know how the earth feels today?

Let me return to the main point.

If human beings did in fact come from somewhere beyond this planet — and again, this is only my intuitive speculation — then we have two possible choices.

One choice would be to conquer the earth and dominate it according to our own human ways.

The other choice is the one represented by the heavenly spirits in Japanese mythology: to respect the laws and rules of the earth, to try to understand them, and to live humbly in harmony with the planet.

The people of old Japan chose the latter.

By building houses with materials that are the remains of plants — wood, bamboo, and thatch — they sought to become one with the earth like plants themselves, and to join the natural network of life.

The earth operates according to many rules and principles.

One of these principles is giving.

Human beings must eat every day.

Simply by living, we must take food from the earth.

Yet the earth continues to give to us.

The sun also continues to give endlessly.

Giving is one of the fundamental principles of life on this planet.

People in old Japan tried to become beings who also give.

Another fundamental rule of the earth is circulation.

Thatched roofs eventually decay.

This is because the earth operates according to cycles.

Giving and circulation are closely related.

By giving, circulation is created.

The rebuilding of Ise Shrine every twenty years also follows this principle of circulation.

The blessings of the sun allow plants to grow, and through those blessings the shrine buildings can be renewed again and again.

Life itself follows the same rule.

Because new life is given, death also exists.

People in old Japan likely understood human death in this way — as part of the same cycle.

In this way, earlier generations of Japanese people adapted themselves honestly to the natural laws of the earth.

Today, however, we often see the opposite tendency. Are we trying to dominate the earth according to human desires and make everything permanent?