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Paper short abstract

The presentation explores the social dynamics of un-silencing myths surrounding meat consumption and climate change, revealing how a plant-based diet is not about individual food choice but about Japanese capitalist patriarchy that is either reproduced or transformed through choice in consumption.

Paper long abstract

A predominant notion prevails about climate change in Japan as something to be fixed by green technology while consumerist Japanese culture can continue unaltered to grow its GDP. New technology may be welcomed but without transforming the myths inbuilt into mainstream consumer conduct, research shows it effectively becomes greenwashing. To question everyday Japanese consumption, however, particularly food consumption, is to question national identity; it presents giving voice to deeply embodied, long-silenced taboos that underpin Japanese group ‘harmony’ and gender performativity. Most conspicuous is the hegemonic objectification of the cruelty inflicted upon billions of farmed animals to make meat consumption an aesthetics of strength, health and gratitude. Industrialised farmed animals present one of the most pressing ethical issues of our time and is central to climate change. This paper explores how promoting a plant-based diet is not simply about food choice but contain major moral, social and political issues, which can either reproduce or transform through choice in consumption the social order. Challenging the so-called Meat Paradox – how we say we abhor cruelty to dogs but then eat factory-farmed pigs – is about challenging deeper cultural identities in high income countries like Japan where the climate crises is funded through everyday individual choices. Japan as a world heavily invested in maintaining a gender binary, meat also presents identification with what defines things as male and female, and the way things associated with men are more valued. When young people in Japan then go plant-based they also challenge basic assumptions about masculinity and femininity, and Japanese capitalist patriarchy. This presentation highlights results from questionnaires distributed to several hundred university student participants in lectures on the issues of meat consumption and climate change, and from around 50 ethnographic interviews that explore the culture of carnivorism in Japan as part of a bigger three year research project about Japanese youth responses to the climate crises.