Can an Ancient Japanese Practice Help Crops Grow Better?
Farmers following Mokichi Okada’s natural farming method began reporting something unexpected. Their harvests were improving — not just because they had stopped using chemical fertilizers, but because of something else entirely.
They were using a practice called Johrei.
What Is Natural Farming?
Okada believed that modern farming had it backwards. For generations, farmers had been adding fertilizers to the soil, assuming more inputs meant better results. But Okada said the opposite was true. The more the soil was treated with artificial substances, the more its natural vitality was suppressed.
Clean soil, he argued, grows better crops. And the results reported by farmers who followed this principle were remarkable.
Why Johrei Made a Difference
Johrei is a practice Okada developed, based on the idea that everything in the natural world has both a physical dimension and a spiritual one — including soil.
When soil is contaminated by artificial fertilizers, Okada said, its spiritual dimension becomes clouded. And when that cloudiness is cleared through Johrei, the soil’s natural growing power begins to return.
As the soil becomes purer, and as the residual toxins in crops themselves are reduced, both work together. Growth becomes more vigorous. Harvests improve.
Okada described this as the principle of spirit leading matter — the idea that the visible, physical world follows the invisible, spiritual one.
A Different Way of Seeing the Natural World
Whether or not you share Okada’s spiritual framework, his core message speaks to something many farmers and scientists are beginning to rediscover today: that healthy soil is alive, and that what we put into it — or stop putting into it — changes everything.
Read the Original
This is a short introduction. The full text — written by Okada in Japanese in 1951 — is available on meshiya.jp.
👉 浄霊の偉効（meshiya.jp）
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