Sacred Purity Through Three-Day Meat Abstinence

Izumo Taisha’s Ancient Ritual of Meat Abstention

Did you know that visiting a Shinto shrine isn’t something you casually do on a whim but rather something requiring proper preparation? While many contemporary Japanese people have largely forgotten these ancient traditions, during my recent journey to Izumo Taisha Shrine (出雲大社) in Shimane Prefecture, I undertook a specific kind of preparation before visiting the shrine this morning. That preparation was the practice known as the “three-day abstention from meat”. Upon hearing this, readers might immediately associate it with Buddhist practices; however, Shinto also includes similar customs. In this article, I’ll delve into this practice based on my own firsthand experience.

Around Izumo Taisha Shrine, one of Japan’s oldest shrines, several traditional customs for purifying oneself before a shrine visit are preserved. One of these teachings explicitly instructs that “one should abstain from consuming meat for three days before visiting the shrine.” Specifically, this entails refraining from meat and following a simple, modest, and vegetarian diet during the three days preceding the shrine visit. Here, “meat” particularly refers to the flesh of “four-legged animals”, a restriction carefully observed by local people in Izumo since ancient times.

Within Shinto belief, eating meat is inherently linked to taking the lives of animals and thus indirectly coming into contact with blood and death, which are considered sources of “impurity” or “kegare” (穢れ), inappropriate for presenting oneself before the divine. In Japanese Shinto, the concepts of “kegare” (impurity) and “imi” (忌, abstinence or taboo) play critical roles, and understanding these alone can greatly enhance the spiritual efficacy of a shrine visit.

To begin with, “kegare” refers to conditions of impurity or contamination affecting the mind and body, signifying a state where spiritual energy or life force has been weakened. A typical example of kegare is associated with death. For instance, when grieving the loss of a family member, the surviving relatives were believed to experience a depletion of spiritual energy due to deep sorrow. In Japan, this condition is known as “kegare” (ケガレ), which can also be interpreted literally as “ki-ga-kareru” (気が枯れる), meaning “the depletion of spiritual vitality.”