One thing that people find surprising when they visit Japan is how hard it is to get real vegetarian fare at restaurants.
Vegetarian foreigners studying abroad soon learn to rely on Indian restaurants for the most options.
But they also learn to just buckle down and eat various foods that have some sort of meat to them, if only a sauce lightly flavored with fish broth.
When I first came to Tokyo this fact surprised me. After all, wasn’t Buddhism an important influence on Japanese culture?
Well, yes it is.
But what does said Buddhism look like in Japan? That’s a more important question, and I didn’t have the answer.
I had read the Dhammapada and the Lotus Sutra by that point, but I didn’t know anything about Zen Buddhism, which is the predominant sect in Japan. Most importantly, I didn’t know what Buddhism meant for everyday Japanese people. So…
Lesson 1: Vegetarianism is for monks, and monks alone.
Everywhere else fish and meat are the expectation. Remember, this is the culture that highlighted the “umami” taste for the rest of us.
Enhancing savory flavors is a top priority in Japanese cuisine, and using meat is the number one way to do so.
Another thing to know:
Lesson 2: Almost no one thinks of themselves as religious.
For Japanese people, “religion” pertains to doctrines and zealous belief. Christians are religious. Maybe Buddhist monks are too. But pick a random passerby on the street and ask if they are religious, and they will look at you suspiciously.
And yet, there are plenty of practices and beliefs that seem religious to outsiders. Priestly incantations at weddings and funerals. Visiting temples to pray. Gifts of food presented to household shrines.
Lighting a cucumber “horse” on fire to serve as a chariot for loved ones to ride back to the land of the dead after a daylong spiritual visit.
To the people who engage in these practices, what they do is not religion, it’s simply part of the Japanese way of life.
Do such practices come from Buddhism? A few of them do. But many more come from Shintoism, the older folk religion of the Island.
In truth, Japanese natives sometimes have a hard time sorting out whether certain traditions are Shinto or Buddhist in origin because they’ve been so thoroughly blended over the centuries.
Most of the stuff concerning nature and ancestral spirits come from Shintoism, as it is an animist religion.
Oh, and…
Lesson 3: Japanese penis festivals are Shinto in origin.
Anyway, moving on.
What about Buddhism? Well, Buddhist traditions came to Japan from China by way of Korea. And Chinese Buddhism is quite different from the original Mahayana Buddhism that came from India.
From my point of view, and my wife agrees:
This type of Buddhism seems a good deal like Catholicism!
There is a hierarchical heavenly host of spiritual guides, and a hell full of demons to punish the wicked.
There’s a lot of focus on guilt and sin, a whole ton of priestly rituals to observe.
Not to mention the temples, which are often ornate, bordering on ostentatious.
Japanese Buddhism has a lot of those elements, but they are tempered by the influence of Zen.
So what is Zen Buddhism? Isn’t it all about peace and love and smoking dope and relaxing to some transcendental meditational vibes, man?
No.
Well, yes, probably, but only in California, where some bowdlerized version of it was exported in the 1940s.
There, Zen was mixed with other Eastern philosophies, and is now largely associated with New Age lifestyles. Japanese people would regard it with even less familiarity than they do California rolls.
Here is what real Japanese Zen Buddhism is about:
Lesson 4:
Lesson over. Thanks, and come again!
I kid, I kid.
Here’s the deal. According to Zen practice, Nothing is sacred.
No, it’s not hedonism, quite the opposite.
Nothingness. Emptiness. Void. “無” (pronounced “mu”).
This is a sacred state to achieve in a world full of material distractions.
Zen is in many ways an attempt to return to the humility and simplicity of the original Buddhist school, Theravada.
It is thus an ascetic practice, requiring rigorous self-discipline. No pain, no gain.
And boy, can I attest to that.
You see, I attended a local temple’s lesson in Zazen when I was studying in Tokyo.
Zazen is the Zen practice of seated meditation. It’s not like conventional meditation where you recite a mantra, or contemplate a riddle that has no answer. With Zazen, you simply sit in lotus or half-lotus style, with your back straight. And that’s it.
The monks didn’t give us any instructions on what to do other than sit straight, breathe slowly through our nose, and remain silent.
They also mentioned in passing that if we wished them to strike our backs with a paddle, we must put our hands together in humble request, then provide a similar gesture of thanks afterward.
I didn’t know what that meant, so I began sitting.
And at some point I began to feel the pins and needles in my leg. I couldn’t think of anything but the strange feeling getting stronger and stronger, and of how much worse it would be once I tried to get up.
So, not really thinking about it too carefully, I put my hands together and raised them up in request. A few seconds later, a monk slowly approached me from behind. A pregnant silence followed.
THWACKK!!!
Motherf-er hit hard!
I was so shocked that I almost forgot to humbly thank him for his efforts.
Interestingly, though, the throbbing pain in my back did counterbalance the numbing of my legs, and so it felt like less of a distraction.
After the session, feeling like I was hovering by magnetic force rather than standing on my legs, I asked a monk what the purpose of Zazen was.
He said:
“The goal is for our minds to grow as numb as our legs.”
I didn’t quite get there, but I could appreciate the effort.
…But then I went out with friends for some beer, chicken skewers, and then karaoke.
Because that’s the most important lesson of all:
When in Rome do as the Romans do;
When in Tokyo, just go to temples for luck on holidays, then get some great food.
…to be continued…
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That’s a hard pass.
I will say that I had a similar experience in Finland, where saunas originated. In traditional saunas (pronounced sah-OON-ah in Suomi) people will collect branches and whack themselves to bring blood to the surface and allow the body to “breathe” in the steam vapor.
Then, just when you’ve had enough, you race out of the cedar shed and jump into a 60F degree pool.
That sounds a little more inviting, to be honest. At least it’s part of a bundle of experiences where the end result is some sort of release.
Asceticism and I didn’t really hit it off…so to speak.
Great insights, Phylum.
Japan is on our list of places to travel to, and I’ve shared your article with my wife, only as a helpful primer of how things really are when it comes to Zen, for example.
Thanks! As I said, Buddhism doesn’t have as much of an impact on everyday life as I thought it would, but it’s interesting to see how it pops up.
For instance, the Zen concept of “shibumi,” of simple, rustic elegance, and “wabi sabi” in which imperfection is most beautiful, has deeply informed Japanese decor and general sense of taste.
Though I try to be vegetarian at home, all bets are off when I travel. Japanese food sounds right up my gastronomic alley. We have a trip coming up next month and I’m looking forward to bangers, black pudding, steak tartar, cheese, and maybe snails.
And now you know the two countries we’re visiting.
I found a blog post about someone who managed to keep strictly vegan while in Japan. I respect their determination, but it also seems like they had a lot of time and money on their hands, not to mention some important connections. Most people won’t have those resources when they visit, so they’ll probably find themselves having to adapt quite a bit.
I’m headed to France as well, and I’m pumped! We’ll be in Paris for a little bit, but mostly in Lyon, which is apparently the gastronomic capital of the world!
I still have never been to England. Will have to correct that once my friend gets stationed there.
We have four days in Paris and then two in Poitiers, which is where my ancestor lived until the French military took him to Quebec. The story is he went AWOL and got caught stealing civilian clothes. Twice. He escaped prison somehow, settled down, married, and had a family in New Brunswick. Hence, me. I don’t know much about his life before he left Poitiers but I’m interested in seeing the place.
The week in England will be bittersweet. We’re visiting our friend who has terminal cancer. It will probably be the last time we see her. It’s likely the only sightseeing we do there will be the pub across the road and walking her dogs, but we don’t care. We’re going to see her and can always see Stonehenge some other time.
I’m sorry to hear that about your friend. Our trip to Japan was a little like that. A big reason we needed to go was to see my wife’s grandmother, who seems physically healthy for 89, but whose dementia has been getting worse. It was great to see her, and great to be back in Japan, but definitely bittersweet, as you say.
That’s a tough one but I’m sure your friend will appreciate the effort in making the journey.
Which part of my green and (sometimes) pleasant land will you be in?
Somewhere near Farnborough. Nowhere near you, I’m afraid, and under difference circumstances I’d make the effort to arrange a meet up, but we want to spend as much time with her as we can.
Totally understand in the circumstances, make the most of the time with your friend. I’ve never been to Farnborough but visited a few places around it both with work and for pleasure and its a nice area. Not far to Legoland which definitely wouldn’t be on your itinerary anyway, unless you have an under 10 with you.
No 10-year-olds with us, but I do question my own maturity sometimes.
Fascinating insight. I’m tempted to say you made up the cucumber horse but it’s no more mad a concept than the Easter bunny or tooth fairy must seem to someone who didn’t grow up with them.
Well done on giving the seated meditation a go. As my wife will attest I find it impossible to sit still for any period of time and I’m not at all flexible so it sounds like being trapped in my personal hell. I appreciate that you suffered so I can read the outcome and decide it isn’t for me.
mt was good enough to find a pic of the cucumber horse, so he must have learned a little bit about the Obon holiday in the process.
It’s a little bit like the Day of the Dead, but it’s a time to go as a family to the ceremony and pay your respects to your ancestors. Most foreigners don’t get to see this, but as a member of my wife’s family I’ve visited the family graves and took part in the rituals for Obon.
As someone who’s seen the movie Foodfight in its entirety, I guess I have a penchant for suffering for the sake of others.
Ha! Considering our topic, I read that last line as a punny with the sake drink. If that was intended, Bravo.
If not, still, Bravo. 😉
Ha! Now, suffering for saké is well worth it!
One thing I didn’t realize til I got there was that “saké” in Japan means booze of any kind: whisky, vodka, shochu, plum wine, as well as the rice wine that we call saké.
Here’s my visual pun for what they call that drink in “Nihon”:
“It’s dolphin! The salad green is made out of dolphin!”
…
This was fantastic Phylum, thank you for this entry. Helped to clear up a lot of my confusion about Japanese ‘religion’, in fact. I never considered how the Japanese just view it as part of their lifestyle and way of living, that’s a rather fascinating approach.
I imagine that’s how most humans thought of religion in ancient times–or rather, did not think about it. It was just a way of life. One that encompassed what we now call the arts, the sciences, philosophy, religion, and (of course) magic.
#JUSTICE4… you know the rest.