for centuries many Ancient Japanese people were vegans

[Guest guest]

this is a great conversation piece..

I'm not saying they were all vegans or vegetarians, but due to CENTURIES

(several hundred years) of religious and laws from the Emperor, most ANCIENT

Japanese did not eat meat...

(some included fish and birds in their diet... some did NOT..)

==

Did you know the owner of Cha Ya was a former Buddhist monk?  That's one

reason why he makes such great vegan food!

The owner currently married with grown kids (not a monk any more)

http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia36/en/feature/feature01.html

(from the 2nd paragraph)

No meat from mammals

Any history of food in Japan has to include the many centuries when eating the

meat of four-legged animals was forbidden. The first law prohibiting meat eating

was issued in the year 675, a little more than 100 years after the arrival of

Buddhism.

In the 7th and 8th centuries, when a new emperor came to the throne he would

issue an Imperial edict forbidding meat consumption. This was because, according

to Buddhist belief, killing animals is wrong. The fact that these edicts were

issued from time to time indicates that some found it hard to give up eating

meat. But by around the 10th century just about everyone had stopped eating it.

In China and the Korean peninsula, the Buddhist clergy were not allowed to eat

meat or fish, but in Japan even ordinary people did not eat meat. This was

partly because of Buddhism, and partly because even the indigenous religion,

Shinto, considered that eating the flesh of animals was unclean.

But the rule extended only to meat from mammals, not seafood. Whales are

mammals, but the common folk thought of them as big fish and there was no

prohibition against killing and eating them. Wild birds were also eaten. There

was a belief that chickens and roosters were messengers working for the Shinto

gods, and their meat and eggs were not eaten until the 15th century.

The indigenous Ainu of Hokkaido in northern Japan depended considerably on food

from wild birds, animals and plants, and deer and bear meat was an important

part of their diet. In the far south, the Ryukyu Kingdom in the Okinawan islands

was in a different jurisdiction and prohibitions against meat eating did not

apply. People there raised pigs, goats and other animals and ate their meat. In

mountainous areas on the main islands of Japan, people who made their living

fishing the mountain streams would hunt wild mammals for their fur and medicinal

properties, and eat the meat of what they caught. And others, hoping to cure

some illness or build up their strength, might practice kusuri-gui (eating

medicinal flesh of wild animals). But in spite of all this, animals were not

raised for meat, and for many centuries meat consumption in Japan was remarkably

low.

Like their neighbors in China and the Korean peninsula, the Japanese did not

drink the milk of domestic animals, and the manufacture of dairy products did

not occur until much later. It is no wonder, then, that preparing fish for the

table developed into a fine art.