Buddhist and Shinto prohibition on eating meat

The Buddhist and Shinto prohibition on eating meat is presented as both a rule Mariko regards as binding and a custom whose observance varies with place and circumstance. Her exchange with Rodrigues complicates any simple picture of universal compliance: she invokes law and religion, while he distinguishes domestic practice in Nagasaki from eating at sea or in Europe.

The Rule as Mariko Understands It

When a ship’s bosun offers Mariko a chicken leg, she refuses, explaining that eating meat is forbidden by law and contrary to Buddhism and Shintoism. Her answer treats the restriction as more than personal preference: it belongs to the religious and legal order she understands herself to inhabit. The bosun counters that people in Nagasaki eat meat, but his assertion does not persuade her to accept the food.

Practice Across Settings

Rodrigues offers a more qualified account. He says that his wife, a convert whose father is a minor samurai under Lord Kiyama, does not eat meat; he likewise abstains at home in Nagasaki, but eats it at sea and in Europe. His practice therefore changes with setting rather than following one rule everywhere. He also argues that meat-eating existed in Japan before the Buddha, framing abstention as a custom that developed with religious teaching rather than an unchanging national habit.

A Point of Cross-Cultural Inquiry

Mariko’s question about whether Rodrigues’s wife eats meat follows her polite remark that the woman is fortunate to have him as a husband. The detail unsettles her because she has just encountered a Portuguese sailor eating meat aboard ship, and she wonders how such customs fit within a household. Rodrigues’s distinction between home and sea gives her a concrete answer, while their exchange makes the prohibition a subject of comparison rather than a settled description of everyone’s conduct. The rule remains meaningful in Mariko’s refusal even as the conversation reveals variation in how people observe it.