Animal Rights in Japan I
I found it quite astonishing to discovered that the first book about animal rights to be published in Japanese only happened in March, 2005. Incredible when you think the likes of BUAV have been active in the far less civilised British Isles for more than 100 years. Dr. Helmut Kaplan’s animal rights classic “Leichenschmaus” (Funeral [...]
MotherFuck-Foreigners
I have spent 25 years religiously chewing brown sushi rice, eating seaweed and drinking twig tea and miso soup. I have spent years of my life saying how wonderful Japan and Japanese people are. I have even spent months of my life attempting to assuage furious Korean nationalists covering the internet with their propaganda, and [...]
Natural Born Vegan Killers
I heard from a friend, who is currently studying natural farming in Wakayama, that his fields were trashed by the local louts. In his case, not teenagers from the local housing project as one might expect in the West, but a troop of macaque monkeys coming down from the mountains in search of food. As [...]
My Meme is Bigger Than Your Meme
The word “meme” was introduced by the British scientist Richard Dawkins as a way of explaining the spread of ideas and cultures in the ‘Selfish Gene’ published in 1976. Examples of memes included pop songs, catch-phrases, beliefs (notably religious beliefs), fashion, gestures, single issue politics and so on. Memetic theorists believe these spread, like mental [...]
Japan: Meat Up or Back to the Edo Diet?
According to the World Research Institute, the annual consumption of meat in Japan has risen from 17.8 kilos per person to 43.9 kilos over the last 40 year. More than double but still, thankfully, only a third of America’s consumption rate. By comparison, Indians, from a country with a similar population density to Japan, eat [...]
More Vegan Enlightenment
Eating fish & animals just because you like to, or it is easy & convenient, is not Buddhist. “Whatever your conception is of perfection is, it is wrong. Throw away that image and keep improving your life. What we think is real, and right, is only an impermanent illusion.” The sages of old went on [...]
Itadakimasu … いただきます
“Being vegan is the one of the most profound, far reaching, easiest and enjoyable ‘itadakimasu’ in the world. There is no better way to offer your thanks and gratitude towards any living being … by not killing it and eating it.” Meals in Japan traditionally begin with the hands in prayer position and the phrase [...]
Pronounced ‘Vee-gan’ … but ヴィーガン or ビーガン?
Vegan is pronounced ‘Vee-gan’ … vē-gən, not ve-jən or ve-jan. For Japanese, in Romanji, that would be ‘vi-gan’. If I came to Japan from a country that had no letter ‘D’, but instead used a letter ‘K’, and I wanted to preach ‘Baka-ism’ after the great spiritual teacher called ‘The Baka’ … the Buddha to you [...]
Getting in Hot Chocolate, Vegan Style
As any good revolutionary knows, never mind mother or marketing man, them with the best cakes will win. “Make Cakes, not War” … and if you don’t have cake, at least make sure you have chocolate. From time to time the vegan movement tends to have its own, seemingly obscure and obsessive to non-vegans, storms [...]
mac