BONES OF CONTENTION: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan, by Barbara R. Ambros. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 255 pp., $29 (paperback)
Bumping into a Japanese acquaintance on the street recently, I inquired where he was going on his day off dressed in a formal business suit. A worker at a major pharmaceutical company, he explained that he was participating in a ceremony honoring the spirits of all the animals that had suffered during experiments in their laboratories. A Buddhist priest would be conducting the rites.
In Barbara R. Ambros' "Bones of Contention," the writer includes a similar example of a restaurant at the foot of a pet cemetery, which holds an annual memorial service for fish, birds and mammals, in a spirit of gratitude for sentient creatures that are "martyrs for the sake of the nation's progress and prosperity."