Japanese skinship, food and communion with kami

I have very strong dietary, emotional and other "skinship" bonds with Japanese culture. My mother died when I was still more or less a child. Afterwards I began to live with a Japanese American family in Diamond Bar, California. So my second mother was Japanese. That's where it started.

Focusing on food, I suppose in ancient agrarian times the Japanese were essentially vegetarian subsisting primarily on rice and preserved vegetables. Consumption of meat, fish or any sort of animal by-product was probably rare. Bauddha-instilled morality was also likely well in place. But as the islands were abundant in enzyme-rich forest items and herbs, the Japanese used these materials to develop incredibly creative and subtle ways of nutritionally enhancing and flavoring their food. Such patterns of food preparation and eating were furthermore seen as a means for people to unite themselves with the numinous qualities of nature (and thought) through a kind of ontological absorption in, or presence with the spirits of locality traditionally known as kami.

Later as an undergraduate student of philosophy I studied under Professor Floyd H. Ross who had gone to Japan as a Fulbright Scholar and wrote his influential study titled Shinto, The Way of Japan (1965).