Japanese Rice-growing Culture And Group Consciousness

From ancient to the middle ages, growing rice was the base of social activity in Japan. Under the influence of rice-growing, a distinctive rice-growing culture had been formed in Japan.Rice-growing culture is a culture which formed in a society of growing rice, that is to say, an integration of social activity and cultural life which were based on rice-growing .The culture not included only the techniques and its spread of rice-up growth-and-evolution, but various intellectual norms of civilian life style, religious custom, convenance, as well as cultural mentality, society and aesthetic ideal and so on, which people who grew rice have possessed.The paper discusses that Japanese rice-growing culture had been reflected by all aspects of introduction and influence of rice-growing, mode of production and way of life, cultural mentality, and social awareness in a rice-growing society. It analyses the reflection of Japanese rice-growing culture, and then illustrates Japanese group consciousness came into being in a"fertile soil"of Japanese rice-growing culture. This is the purpose of the paper.Social being decides upon social awareness, social awareness affects social being. Japanese rice-growing society had gestated and developed a kind of group consciousness, on the other hand, Japanese group consciousness had affected a rice-growing society, which not only had a great effect on Japanese society, but became an organic ingredient of Japanese national nature.