Category Insights

In Sapporo, the winter tap water runs cold, numbing your fingers in seconds. The feeling brings back memories of my time training at Enryaku-ji on Mt. Hiei. But now I am in my own kitchen, surrounded by modern appliances and the sounds of the city. Yet every morning as I wash the day’s rice until the water runs clear, the internal work remains exactly the same. Whether you are a monk in training or a home cook preparing dinner after a long day, the physical act of cooking is the easy part. The real challenge — and the real practice — lies in sanshin, the Three Minds. If the heart is not aligned, the meal is already compromised before the fire is lit.

In monastery kitchens time is not measured solely by the clock. It is measured by the moment a bamboo shoot pushes through the soil and reaches for the sun, the color and scent of a fully ripened persimmon ready to be plucked from the tree, or the final days before winter when the last of the year’s crops are harvested and the earth goes dormant. This attentiveness to natural rhythm lies at the heart of shōjin ryōri, and it is expressed through the concept of shun (旬).

Buddhism arrived in Japan during the 6th century, bringing with it the foundations of this plant-based cuisine, but shōjin ryōri as we know it today crystallized during the Kamakura period (1185–1333) with the rise of Zen Buddhism. In 675, Emperor Tenmu issued an imperial decree banning meat consumption, aligning the nation's diet with Buddhist principles of compassion. This is not passive abstention but deliberate devotion—a practice designed to cultivate holistic well-being of body, mind, and spirit. When the practitioner treats the kitchen as a meditation hall, every choice at the cutting board becomes a teaching on interdependence: our food, our bodies, and the natural world exist in continuous relationship.