Humans, the Smallest Nature 05 | Living as a Part of Nature

Many people perceive themselves as separate from nature. However, in reality, every single aspect of our lives—eating, clothing ourselves, using tools—is established within a connection to nature.

Every ingredient in our daily meals originates from living plants and animals. In the sense that we continuously renew our bodies by incorporating the lives of others, human life is itself a natural process. Even industrial products like clothing, vessels, iron, and petroleum are nothing more than natural resources in altered forms. No matter how much modernization progresses, humans cannot exist for even a single moment without nature.

One of the societies that lived out this simple yet inescapable fact most deeply was the Jomon society, which persisted on the Japanese archipelago for over ten thousand years.

The Jomon period began approximately 15,000 years ago, when global warming started.
As the cold, dry glacial period ended and the environment shifted to a warm and humid one, people's livelihoods changed significantly. The nomadic life of following large herbivores ended, and a sedentary life based on readily available natural resources, such as fish and shellfish from rivers and the sea, and nuts from the forests, became possible. There was no replacement of the human population; the lifestyle simply changed as a result of the same people responding to environmental changes.

In many parts of the world, a sedentary life was only realized after a stable food supply became possible through agriculture and animal husbandry. However, on the Japanese archipelago, a sedentary life was established solely through surrounding natural resources—mountains, rivers, and the sea—and this persisted for over ten thousand years. The background to this uniqueness lies in the topographical features of the Japanese archipelago.

The Japanese archipelago has a landscape rich in undulations, from high mountains to deep seas, due to the activity of four moving tectonic plates. Because complex geographical environments were formed within a narrow area, diverse ecosystems overlapped, allowing people to obtain different resources each season without having to move in search of food. This "biodiversity within a narrow area" is the condition that made the Jomon-style sedentary life possible.
Therefore, when explaining the Jomon period, which achieved a sedentary life solely through natural resources, plate activity and volcanoes are essential.

At the same time, however, plate activity brings destructive disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. People have repeatedly experienced that nature is both a blessing and an existence that can never be controlled. It is thought that the accumulation of such memories fostered a sense that humans are kept alive as part of nature, and furthermore, a sense of awe toward nature.

That view of nature can be read in remains such as shell mounds and earthwork structures. There, not only the remains of creatures that served as food, but also large quantities of tools born from soil and stone, such as pottery and stone implements, are piled up. It is thought that these were not dumping grounds for unnecessary items, but places to mourn and give thanks to everything that supported life. The fact that shell mounds are called "mounds" (tsuka) and that people were also buried there is significant. The sense of finding life not only in living things but also in soil and stone is expressed here.

Here lies a worldview different from the modern idea of "coexistence with nature." The word "coexistence" presupposes a structure where humans and nature are "separated," and humans take the lead in protecting nature. However, nature would be perfectly fine without humans. It is the human side that would be unable to survive. Humans are merely beings supported by other parts of nature—animals, plants, soil, stone, water, and wind—as part of nature itself.

Humans are nature, and among all of nature, we are the smallest existence.

This was the "wisdom" that the Jomon people polished over a long period of time, allowing humans to live within the vast cycle of nature. Since the modern era, we have developed through knowledge and technology that separates, manages, and controls humans and nature, but in that process, we have forgotten the existence of this fundamental wisdom.

What is needed now is not to present a new ideology. It is to revive, within a modern context, the sense that "we are kept alive by nature," which humanity once certainly possessed. That is the very reason for putting forward the thesis that "humans are the smallest nature."

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