Out of Character Chat III

[Yasuki Tomonaga]

Too late. I've already summoned the murder-weasels.

Oh no, not again

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

Too late. I've already summoned the murder-weasels.

Hideo can defeat them with his wakizashi.

[Ide Samai]

Too late. I've already summoned the murder-weasels.

When are we getting the seeing eye weasels?

[Iuchi Yukarin]

Too late. I've already summoned the murder-weasels.

Oh no, not again

What do you mean "not again"?

What are you hiding from Yukarin-chan?

...

IS IT THE WEASEL YAKUZA??

[Otaku Chi-Pu]

Samurai can be reincarnated as a fishx so why is it ok to eat fish but not goats?

I mean, if reincarnation is the only reason we dont eat meat..

[Soshi Taira]

... Looking at the meetings that are coming up... Day 5 is going to be a very... dramatic... day for Taira, I'm starting to expect.

[Ide Amaya]

I am *finally* caught up! Sorry to anyone who had threads waiting for me.

[Yogo Yuichi]

Samurai can be reincarnated as a fishx so why is it ok to eat fish but not goats?

I mean, if reincarnation is the only reason we dont eat meat..

I think it has to do more with touching dead flesh and blood.

But chicken and fish also have blood and flesh... so my guess is that Rokugan is hypocritical society

[Soshi Taira]

Samurai can be reincarnated as a fishx so why is it ok to eat fish but not goats?

I mean, if reincarnation is the only reason we dont eat meat..

I think it has to do more with touching dead flesh and blood.

But chicken and fish also have blood and flesh... so my guess is that Rokugan is hypocritical society

Oh but we already knew that.

[Ide Amaya]

I see it more as either a lack of the kind of critical thinking that would allow them to recognise the hypocrisy, or they are like Amaya and just don't want to think too hard about it (Amaya's Soft-Hearted extends to animals, but she still eats meat because the transformation of lamb to lamb is abstract enough that she doesn't have to address that particular hypocrisy).

[Soshi Taira]

I think they are like most people, who just kind of muddle through. Most religious folks aren't like... Religious capital R. I say this as a capital R religious person. So yeah, I think we're all just trying to make do, and the lengths to which the human mind can make contradictory ideas fit together... tells me that yeah, Rokugan is just like the rest of us. Totally making it up as they go.

[Ichiro Daisuke]

*Shoots arrows at Daisuke's work until it stops trying to murder him*

*Cavalry charges it for good measure*

Thanks!

It even seemed to help a bit!

@convo: At this point I think they don't eat meat and such because it's tradition not to eat meat and etc.

[Suki]

I think one thing to keep in mind, is samurai can and do touch blood/dead flesh on a fairly regular basis. It's an inevitability of war. They just make sure that afterwards, they clean up and they do some praying at the local temple/arch. Dealing with blood/flesh just makes a person temporarily, spiritually unclean. Hence why it's generally the non-people that do the leather-working and butchery for the Unicorn.

That and there's the matter of balancing religion and practicality. The Unicorn (and Dragon, for that matter) feel they need to eat red meat to survive. You can't practice your religion or serve your lord if you're dead... not in this life anyway.

[Iuchi Saksaha]

If you really wanted to apply some fix-it logic to the worldbuilding, you could springboard off the Buddhist justification for vegetarianism--partly, that eating meat causes suffering to fellow-beings--and say that mammals are much higher-order beings than fish and fowl so their suffering is a greater kharmic problem (in Rokugan).

The Togashi character I've played was a full-bore vegetarian and that's partly why I felt it fit...

IIRC the reason dietary habits were like that in parts of premodern Japan had as much or more to do with a practical lack of arable land that could be wasted on raising livestock for meat, which doesn't really seem to apply to the more spacious Rokugan. (Yuuru or somebody else might bop me on the nose for wildly overgeneralizing here. )

[Yogo Yuichi]

Well if I remember correctly, fish and birds in some historical religious traditions were not considered as 'animals' so they don't have 'meat'. For these people, fish and birds were some strange 'things' that swam or flown. They were more akin to plants for them.