{"id":156113,"date":"2026-05-09T16:03:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=156113"},"modified":"2026-05-09T16:03:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:03:24","slug":"beef-india-and-meiji-japan-avi-das","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2026\/05\/09\/beef-india-and-meiji-japan-avi-das\/","title":{"rendered":"Beef, India and Meiji Japan – Avi Das"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Did you all know that consumption of Beef was forbidden in Japan, for over 1200 years? It was actively forbidden by the Buddhists and also the Hindu influence over Japanese philosophies, including Shintoism. Consumption was rare, stigmatized, and legally discouraged, rather than entirely nonexistent. If you consume, you’d be made to do penance for 100 days. Until 1872.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then came Emperor Meji and along with him he brought the Meiji restoration. He decided to go hook line and sinker and ape the west. Emperor Meiji formally lifted the bans to promote modernization, Westernization, and better nutrition. The influence of Christians and Europeans on him will make for a separate post. But, in 1872 he made a royal decree allowing people to eat Beef, thus upturning centuries old law in Japan. This alienated the Buddhists so that about a dozen priests went to protest at his palace. Most of them were killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He publicly ate beef to encourage the population. This was 1872.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 4 decades he died of Uremia. A toxic buildup of a significantly high proportion, related to high consumption of red meat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emperor Meiji had fifteen children, including five princes and ten princesses, but ten of them died of meningitis-like disease in their infancy. All three of Emperor Meiji’s children by his concubine Yanagiwara Naruko contracted meningitis during the first year of their lives, and their first two children died of the illness. Another of his concubines, Chigusa Kotoko, also gave birth to two daughters who died of meningitis in infancy. Bacterial meningitis is again a product of uncooked or undercooked beef.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within a decade and a half of his passing the Beef decree, Japan became a colonial power and visited untold miseries on Korea and China. Approximately 14 million people died. About 4 million Japanese died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan, for the first time in its history, was conquered by another country. It has, since, been a vassal state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, all this is unrelated to eating beef. Isn’t it? But what so disturbed the spirit of the land?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source : Avi Das (Face Book)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/avi.das1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna Did you all know that consumption of Beef was forbidden in Japan, for over 1200 years? It was actively forbidden by the Buddhists and also the Hindu influence over Japanese philosophies, including Shintoism. Consumption was rare, stigmatized, and legally discouraged, rather than entirely nonexistent. If you consume, you’d be made to do penance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-senaka-weeraratna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156114,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156113\/revisions\/156114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}