Japan is home to more Michelin starred restaurants than anywhere else in the world. Food tourism is one of the motivating factors foreigners visit the country, and the nation's obsession with the culinary world is almost incomparable, but when it comes to its relationship with veganism and vegetarianism, the country has a reputation for being notoriously difficult to navigate.
There's a strange dichotomy between the country's history and current social acceptance of non-meat eating lifestyles, and although it's slowly changing, the journey has been far from easy. To understand Japan's unusual relationship with meat, we have to briefly look at the country's culinary history.
When you trace the origins of what many would consider to be 'classic' Japanese dining, you can't look past 'shojin ryori' the traditional dining style of the nation's Buddhist monks. This meat-free lifestyle hit fever pitch around the 13th century when the philosophies of Zen Buddhism swept across the country.
An influence from China, the philosophies behind shojin ryori were pretty straightforward, but two-fold. First there were the ethical ideologies of Zen Buddhism. Many Buddhists believed that killing animals for human consumption clouded the spirit and would interfere with the purity of meditation.
The second reason for a vegetarian lifestyle was the minimization of waste. Self-sufficiency, simplicity and sustainability are the backbones of shojin ryori style cooking. It was believed that self-sourced, seasonal foods helped bring one in touch with nature and encourage a deeper level of appreciation for the gifts that nature delivers us.
Although they're ancient ideologies, they are still very much today the foundations upon which many build their plant-based lifestyles. Speaking with Kai a young Japanese vegan restaurant worker, he explained how his appreciation of nature became the turning point in his new life as a vegan.
So how did Japan go from nation whose biggest religions were based on the ethical consumption of food and meat-free lifestyles to one with a reputation for being notoriously difficult for non-carnivores?
Well, the (red) meat revolution in Japan is a relatively new one. In fact as Marta Zaraska covers in his 2016 book MEATHOOKED, as recently as 1939 the typical Japanese person ate around two and a half grams of meat per day, over a yearly average. By today's standard the average is 133 grams, and the meat topping the list is pork.
A shortage of available farming land that could be better utilized by plant-based agriculture meant that in medieval times (675 CE) the country's rulers imposed seasonal meat eating bans. But later, with western influence came the introduction of meat eating to the mainstream.
In the 18th century, the Dutch implanted the idea in the Japanese psyche that eating meat was beneficial for health. The meat-centric diets of Europeans were loaded with connotations of social progress and it wasn't long before Japan's red meat consumption increased.
In fact, emperor Meiji and his government believed eating meat was key to the nation's modernization and an important factor in bolstering the strength of the army. Following World War II, and the American occupation that with it, the US style of eating became irreversibly influential. With the introduction of bacon, hamburgers, and Mc Donald's came also western inspired localized incarnations of red-meat options, like beef bowl outlets and convenience store fried chicken.
This post World War II red meat loving diet has been the more typical norm that was until recently. As Japan has become a much more globalized nation, like it did with meat, western dietary influence has sparked a kind of small but growing alternative, vegan and vegetarian community, but it's not without its social barriers.
As Kai explains, since becoming vegan his social life has taken a rather different form "When I wasn't vegan, friends would invite me out for food, and drinking, and I'd always say yes. Now that I'm vegan, they invite me out less." But in the grander scheme of things it's worked out for the better "when I was going out I felt like maybe I was just loosing money and my time, but now it's no problem. I keep my time, my money".
But for him it's not about being hippy, he adheres to what he calls "punk style" way of looking at things, an ethos of social awareness, fast paced work, living with a purpose, and always questioning unchallenged acceptance of social norms.
Although contemporary vegetarianism is still sometimes seen as a hippy too-western concept, it's changing, and fast.
Head down the back streets of Jiyugaoka and you'll see the strictly vegan T's café with a constant flow of customers, some foreign but many Japanese digging into big hearty, vegetable filled bowls of ramen. Spend an evening strolling around Harajuku and you'll stumble upon Eightablish (8ablish) a proudly animal free fine dining restaurant that combines the Japanese sense of perfectionism with more western cooking ideologies. If you're looking for the ultimate comfort food you'll find Shibuya's LAPAZ a strictly organic, plant based establishment serving up soul food like burgers and hearty curries that'll satisfy all your cravings.
Although in previous years, yes it may have been a little more challenging to avoid meat in Japan, today we're on the cusp of what looks to be a second meat free evolution. Given that Tokyo is the city of innovation, incredible food and lightening evolution, what's on this culinary horizon is very exciting.