About

I Can Do It In Priest Robes, or 僧衣でできるもん, refers to the translation of a hashtag used to categorize videos of Buddhist monks performing a variety of activities in their robes. These monks have adopted the hashtag as a means of protest against the arrest of a monk who was arrested for driving in his robes.

Origin

On September 16th, 2018, a Buddhist monk received a traffic violation for driving in his priest robes. The monk, who was in traditional garb, was on the way to a religious ceremony and claimed to have worn robes while driving for more than 20 years.^[1] He was ordered to pay a fine of ¥6,000.

On December 29th, Twitter user @gokurakusan tweeted a video of a monk skateboarding. They captioned the tweet, "僧衣を着ててもこんくらい出来るので、車の運転で僧衣が邪魔になることはないのです (translation: "Because it can be crowded even if it wears the robe, the holy robe is not disturbed by driving the car"). The tweet received more than 4,200 retweets and 10,000 likes in less than one week (shown below).^[2]

Spread

Following the post, other priests posted videos of monks performing activities in their traditional robes. For example, on December 30th, Twitter^[3] user @tossyan753 tweeted a video of a monk juggling bowling pins. The post received more than 13,000 retweets and 25,000 likes in less than one week (shown below).

In January 2019, Twitter^[4] published a Moments page on the videos. Additionally, The Daily Dot ^[5] posted an article about the hashtag.

Search Interest

External References