抄録
“Shizen”, in Japanese was translated from the English word, “Nature”, during the Meiji era in Japan, AU instances of “Shizen” appearing in articles in a Japanese newspaper published between 1878 to 1996 were studied in order to examine the process of change of the Japanese concept of the meaning of the word “Shizen”. From the results of this investigation, the following was found:(1)“Shizen” was popularized in the 1960's. The reason for the number of occurrences of “Shizen” appearing in newspapersi ncreased from when it is assumed that Japanese people had lost their belief in a presence of God existing in nature since natural phenomena were known to be both controlled and explained scientifically. However, Japanese people wanted to associate some feeling of mystery related to the meaning of “Shizen” in order to gain spiritual richness.(2) The meaning of “Shizen” lacked in concreteness and did not have one definable meaning due to the ideological recognition of natural phenomenon.(3) Desirable natural environments that were labeled “Shizen” not only included the wilderness. These environments remained in a countryside landscape which was safety and gave one an impression of some kind of mysterious experience.
