My thought of Vegetarianism and Japanese. It was my first time to meet vegetarians, when I went out of Japan. I was thinking vegetarians were something people of fancy, when I was a child. Some people have misunderstanding about vegetarianism of Japanese history. It is fact, an emperor prohibited from eating meat in 7 century. But we should be careful about the power of government in the era. It didn’t have enough power to change popular habit and culture, its influence was very limited. (Even today, central governments can not change cultures easily in any country.) The emperor who made the prohibition might have an intension. His era, many migrants were coming from Korea and China, they were getting more power in imperial court. They had culture of stockbreeding and ate more meat than Japanese natives who didn’t have breeding technology. By the prohibition of meat eating, he might try to control new comers’ powers. In the result, Japan didn’t get Chinese or Korean stockbreeding technology, and they remained native culture. Of course Japanese likes to eat fish, deer, boar, and bird. Hunting is in native culture of Japan (When you travel in Japan, you can find many traditional food with those animals meat, but not pig or cattle.). Buddhism effect didn’t work for vegetarianism. Japan imported Buddhism as a technology, not as a religion. When public started to follow Buddhism after 12 century, Buddhism had been Japanized so much and didn’t recommend strict vegetarianism. In 1685, an order of animal protection was issued by head leader of Samurai. This order could change Japanese eating habit a little more, stop eating dogs and cats totally (In East Asia, all countries had culture of eating dog and cat.). Cow and horses are not for eating originally in Japan, because they are able assistants for rice farming and battle. With modernization of Japan, Japanese learnt stockbreeding, and started to eat. There are no restraints on eating animals. Therefore Japanese have not obtained idea of vegetarian. In some sense Japanese eat less meat, but don’t know vegetarianism, because they didn’t have to distinguish Veg or Non-veg, by religious aspect. It is difficult to find pure Veg food in Japan, because of reason above. There are no Veg and Non-veg marks in Japan. When we look at Non-veg mark, we will think it is Japanese national flag.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:09:59 +0000
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