This paper analyses how the modern term ‘nature’ was translated into jayeon and shizen in Korea and Japan. It is said that the Chinese character ‘ziran自然’ was coined in ancient China and imported to Korea and Japan. Before the 19th century, ‘jayeon’ and ‘shizen’ were generally used as the concepts of the nature of things and of some spontaneous status of things. When the term ‘nature’ was imported into Japan during the 19th century, however, there was some conceptual difference between ‘nature’ and ‘shizen’. The concept of ‘nature’ included collective things in external world divided from the human mind. When ‘nature’ was translated into ‘shizen’, the traditional term ‘shizen’ included the concept of ‘nature’ itself. After the modern term ‘shizen’ was used in Meiji Japan, it was also imported to Korea. The Korean students, who studied Japanese modernization in Tokyo, accepted the modern term ‘shizen’. They translated the modern term ‘shizen’ into ‘jayeon’ as the Korean word. The translation of ‘nature’ into ‘shizen’ in Japan and ‘Jayeon’ in Korea illustrates the change of the views and understanding of nature in both countries since the 19th century.