The purpose of this paper is to decipher Japanese “education through the environment” via a comparison with the Reggio Emilia Approach. In Japan, the goal of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is to educate young children through their environment. The Reggio Emilia Approach considers the environment to be a “third educator”. We compared the Japanese concept of “education through the environment” with the Reggio Emilia Approach because of their similarities in their approaches to ECEC. In this study, we utilized Japanese literature to conduct the comparison. Through the literature review, we discussed the following points: 1) what is “environment” as defined in the Japanese ECEC and the Reggio Emilia Approach? 2) Who has the role of creating and changing the environment? 3) How is the environment structured? After considering these points, we questioned and re-examined “education through the environment”.