世論 What Japan Thinks

For some reason that I am not quite familiar with, a recent craze in Japan is Buddhist statues, which was the subject of this survey from iShare.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of June 2009 553 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.1% of the sample were male, 38.9% in their twenties, 30.6% in their thirties, and 30.6% in their forties.

This seems like a good excuse to remind my readers that my Buddhist name is The Boy Craving-Filled Head. What’s yours?

I do like visiting temples myself, and the Nara National Museum has a huge collection of statues and other Buddhist treasures, and is well worth a visit.
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“What!”, I hear you cry, “aren’t all Buddhist priests supposed to be vegetarians?” The key word is of course supposed. The original Buddha, Shakyamuni, apparently was not, as is popularly believed, vegetarian, but instead just forbade people who would offer him food from killing an animal on his behalf. If he visited a family with a mutton curry in the pot, he would eat it if offered, or so it is recorded.

However, the various schools have adopted their own particular set of rules for their monks and priests, and most do (presumably) prescribe a vegetarian diet. And no alcohol of course.

Bearing this in mind, Triva no Izumi (Fount of Trivia) decided to ask 100 meat-eating priests what their favourite kind of 焼肉, yakiniku, grilled meat, beef in particular, was. What percentage of the total number of priests asked admitted to meat-eating is sadly not recorded. I have also previously translated another survey on the general population’s favourite grilled meat.
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