Devotional life releases experienced a resurgence in early modern Japan thanks to the influence of Ming-Qing Buddhism. Like their counterparts in China, early modern Japanese texts on life releases predominantly dealt with small aquatic species, and proponents of the ethic of refraining from killing and releasing life were seriously invested in the principles of karmic retribution and the accumulation of merit in pursuit of vital benefits. In addition to highlighting soteriological considerations for humans and animals, early modern Japanese Buddhist tracts on life releases emphasized the importance of protecting and prolonging the lives of aquatic animals, especially softshell turtles, eels, and clams. The tracts encouraged devotees to extend the animals’ lives and alleviate their bodily suffering just as the animals were expected to extend the devotees’ lives and alleviate their corporeal suffering in return. As restaurants serving turtle stew and broiled eel began to flourish in the eighteenth century, Buddhist proponents of the ethic of refraining from killing and releasing life resisted the predominant social practice of killing and consuming animals. Primed by popular Buddhist tracts, devotees could envision rescuing the animals from certain death and returning them to the wild even when they released them into urban waterways after purchasing them from street vendors, who procured and sold turtles and eels for this purpose. Aquatic animals played their part in the dramatic release rituals by swimming and fluttering away, a moment often captured in illustrations from the period. While critics questioned whether purchasing aquatic animals to release them ultimately contributed to the animals’ suffering, proponents focused on the compassion and blessings generated by refraining from killing and releasing life. In this way, these early modern tracts developed a complex ethic of refraining from killing and releasing life that stressed the bodily connections between humans and animals, and they used affect to trigger human compassion toward other living beings to generate vital karmic benefits in this and future existences and establish a well-ordered cosmos.

Keywords: life releases, Edo period, Japanese Buddhism, fish, turtles

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Barbara R. Ambros (Ph.D., Harvard University 2002) is a professor of East Asian religions in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She served as the co-chair of the Animals and Religion Unit of the American Academy of Religions from 2014 to 2021 and has been on the steering committee of the unit since 2009. Her publications include Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012) and Buddhist Beasts: Reflections on Animals in Asian Religions and Culture (a special issue of Religions, 2019) coedited with Reiko Ohnuma, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on animals and religion in Japan and East Asia. She is currently working on a monograph on life releases in the Edo period, an English translation of Vincent Goossaert’s L’interdit du bœuf en Chine, and an edited volume titled Animals and Religion (with David Aftandilian and Aaron Gross).