Shinto View of Nature
 
Japan has been blessed with a rich natural climate, and it enjoys clearly  demarcated seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter. This continuous cycle of  four seasons has provided a richness and bounty to the lives of the Japanese  people.
Deeply indebted to the blessing of nature, the Japanese people came to  acknowledge spiritual powers which brought about life, fertility, and  prosperity. The natural life-power which gave birth to things was called Musubi  (divine power of growth), and this divine musubi - namely, a divine nature and  power - was perceived in the manifold workings and phenomena of nature. At the  same time, the Japanese people have long revered their ancestors who enormously  contributed to the goodness of a society by enthronement of their spirits as the  divine.
These deities are classified by individual names in accordance with the specific  nature of their spiritual powers. No hierarchy is found among most of the  Japanese deities, but they form a single divine realm centered on Amaterasu  Omikami, a representation of the sun, and revered as ancestor of the Japanese  people including the Imperial Family.
Since the Japanese people felt the blessings and workings of the divine within  such a broad variety of natural phenomena, they came to hold the ideal of a life  which was in harmony with and united with nature.
Mountains with heroic peaks, deep valleys, and the wide ocean were also viewed  as dwellings for the divine, and other natural objects such as evergreen trees  and huge rocks were considered to be media or symbols of divine spirits.
The divine spirit dwells in all of nature, and brings joy and bounty to our  lives. Through intimate contact with nature, the Japanese people have continued  to imbibe its breath of life.

Shinto and Agriculture
 
Until the present day, the Japanese people have maintained their way of life on  the basis of rice cultivation, the form of agriculture best  suited to the Japanese climate.

Hydraulic rice agriculture had already been introduced to Japan in the  prehistoric period, and the rice thus produced was from an early period treated  as a sacred food indispensable to the Japanese way of life.
In spring rice shoots were transplanted to paddies, and in fall the harvest is  taken in. A variety of festivals (Matsuri) were held seasonally in each region  for the purpose of making invocation for the successful maturation of the rice.
In this way, the yearly repetition of the life cycle of the rice came to the  form the basic rhythm of the Japanese way of life as seen up to the present day.
In turn, the gradual formalization and systematization of such rice-agriculture  rituals and festivals produced the religion of Shinto. Shinto is both the  indigenous folk religion of Japan, and the history of the Japanese peoples way  of life. And as the basis of Japanese culture, Shinto has supported the way of  life of the Japanese people to the present day.

Japanese Mythology and Shinto
 
The Japanese mythology collected in the Japanese classics such as Kojiki (The  Record of Ancient Matters), Nihonshoki ( The Chronicles of Japan), Kogo Shuki  (The Commentaries on Ancient Words) and Fudoki (Local Gazetteers) transmit a  dynamic portrayal of the birth of the land, the genealogy of the deities, and  the establishment of the nation and its subjection to peaceful rule. Within the  myths can be found deified nature spirits, noble heroes, and ancestral deities,  including numerous deities of both male and female gender. From within epic  dramas woven around those deities, the Japanese people have learned how to live  as human beings, and thus been entrusted with a core of faith.
The festivals offered in thanks to the deities for their bounty, and within  which people share their joy with others, have also provided an excellent source  of edification for the lives of the Japanese people.
In Shinto, human beings are believed to be born pure, with a gentle and clear  disposition. To be pure is to approach godliness; indeed it is to become one  with the state of the divine. It is Shinto prayer, Shinto heart, to return  to that original human state, and live a daily life which is at one with Kami  (deities).