Does this gesture comes from religious background and beliefs in the first place? Kind of like praying hands ect?
Do you think there is still some religious meaning left in that or it’s purely habitual & non specific at this day and age?
合掌のその意味自体がお祈りのこと連想させるので、 「頂きます」の時の由来についてご存知の方、教えてくださいー
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/yrrb17/why_exactly_japanese_press_hands_together_when/
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I think I somewhere read that it has to do with Shinto, and the hand pressing and clapping is similar to how you pay respects to the kami. Additionally, children are taught that every grain of rice and food you eat has a soul. Which is why people get mad if you don’t eat all your rice (and that you also wasted food). But I think it’s mostly considered a cultural thing now, even though it does have that religious belief behind it.
To note, いただきます/itadakimasu could translate to “to humbly receive”. So I think it comes from the thought that, if you kill an animal or harvest rice and eat it, you pay your respects to the life that was taken so you could eat.