and energy from a more ethical viewpoint and to reconsider what would be a more responsible lifestyle.
Natural Nutrition
In my childhood, just after the war, I used to run barefoot through vacant lots and fields. Sometimes I would step on a sharp stone or nail and hurt myself. I would spit on the cut to clean it, press it until the bleeding stopped, and be back at play in a moment, completely forgetting the scratch. There were severe food shortages after the war, so our meals were a motley hash of whatever was available. A grilled or boiled fish was a real feast. We seldom had meat, eggs, or milk, which I thought were only given to hospital patients as convalescent food. Among my playmates were those whose black hair turned brown for lack of nutrition. Even then, their bodies were strong enough to shrug off cuts and scratches. If some kid wore an obvious bandage, he would be teased and ostracized by the group.
When American nutritional physiology was introduced, we were taught that in order to grow as strong as Americans, we had to eat more meat and eggs, and drink more milk. Some Japanese even thought that bread produced more intelligent children than rice did. Many Japanese began to imitate what they thought was a Western diet. It is true that this diet had more protein than the rations of the long wartime years, so it was a substantial improvement over our wartime diet. However, I cannot help feeling that our natural immunity to illnesses, which healed our wounds and sprains in spite of our thin bodies, has decreased compared to the past.
Nowadays it is advertised that foods rich in not only proteins, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals, but innumerable trace elements and nutrients, are indispensable to the human body. These foods are also very rich in fats, sugars, sodium, and artificial additives that make them appear more attractive and therefore sell well. As a result, the bodies of many Japanese are now like a eutrophied ocean. Excessive fats, sugars, salts, and additives make a body ill. Medical science has well demonstrated that too much fat contributes to heart disease and thrombosis, too much salt to high blood pressure and strokes, too much sugar to diabetes, and too many additives to cancer.
Even from a simple diet, balanced and rich in vegetables, our bodies can manufacture many of the nutritive substances essential to good health. We do not need to ingest many artificial additives. Our bodies have the biological ability to extract minerals and reconstruct many vitamins from suitable amounts of food and carry them throughout our systems. People in the past knew this natural function of the human body from experience. That a balanced natural diet is preferable to a highly processed artificial diet has also been established as medical fact.
If we forget this simple natural power in our bodies and become unduly swayed by the trendy commercialism of processed food manufacturers, we stray from the way of natural health. This also becomes a deviation from ethics, in that we waste enormous resources of food and engender what may be a precarious food situation in our future.
Declining Japanese Agriculture
Where do we get the ingredients of the sumptuous food served on the daily Japanese dinner table? The fact is that two-thirds of them are imports; Japan produces less than half of the total calories necessary for its own sustenance. Many countries produce almost all their own daily dietary requirements. Generally speaking, people import only food they cannot produce by themselves on account of their geographical and climatic conditions. For the Japanese, such foods include tropical products like bananas, coffee, and sugar. However, we Japanese depend on imports for most of our staple foods, even for the ingredients of our native dishes.
Hamburgers used to be a trendy fad food among young people, but they have now become a standard in the Japanese diet. The beef used for burgers is almost all imported from Australia. A few burger restaurants use Japanese beef, but the cattle are fed entirely on grain that is imported from America. Of course, the flour for the buns is also imported. So Japanese hamburgers consist almost totally of American and Australian ingredients.
What about a traditionally Japanese food like sushi? The raw tuna comes from the South Pacific, the shrimp from India, Malaysia, or South America, the octopus from the coast of Africa, the sea bream from New Zealand, the dried seaweed from South Korea, the ginger garnish from Taiwan. Wasabi, or Japanese horseradish, is foreign-grown and colored with chlorophyll. Recently even our rice is sometimes imported. Only the water in which the rice is boiled is assuredly Japanese.
Or consider the case of another traditionally Japanese favorite, soba (buckwheat noodles). The Japanese buckwheat plant is indigenous, but today, 70 percent of the ingredients of buckwheat noodles come from Canada or other foreign countries. Because soba is thought to represent Japanese culture, Japanese people find it hard to believe that even its ingredients are now imported. It makes us feel painfully insecure to learn that we entrust foreign countries with manufacturing soba, which used to be a staple unique to the Japanese diet. If we want to retain control of our national food supply, we must produce the staple ingredients of our foods in our own country.
In distancing our food from our culture, we lose an appreciation of our food. We no longer know anyone who raises the crops, and food becomes just another disposable commodity like anything else. Ultimately, we lose all sense of ethical responsibility and throw away uneaten food without compunction. Our dependence on imports even for the ingredients of our traditional dishes like tofu, miso, and soy sauce leads to our loss of control of our culinary culture. At the same time, our ability to buy any food for money alone, without thinking of its origin or the labor that went into producing it, has eroded our ethic of appreciating each food. Poor Japan no longer grows its own food, but only processes and consumes imported ingredients.
Japan's industrial strength and highly valued yen have enabled it to import food from almost everywhere. Even starving countries sell food to surfeited Japan to obtain foreign currency. Japanese markets are indeed full of food, but this opulence is tenuous and superficial. Since we Japanese no longer produce our own food, we are dangerously at the mercy of the world food situation. We must be aware that Japan produces the least food per person of any major country.
Climate Endangers Staple Imports
Staples such as rice, wheat, barley, and soybeans are by far the most important items of the Japanese diet. When we think of the Japanese diet, we first think of cooked rice; the Japanese language uses the same word for rice as for meal. Japanese and Chinese noodles; macaroni, spaghetti, and other pasta; bread, breakfast cereal, crackers, cookies, cakes, candies, and countless other foods made from grain cover the entire gamut of our eating habits. Even meat, and dairy products like milk, butter, and cheese are dependent on grain because they are provided by grain-fed cattle. Cereal grains are an indispensable source of complex carbohydrates, the primary caloric intake of our diet. If unrefined, like brown rice and whole wheat, they also provide important vitamins, minerals, and proteins.
Even though grain is so central to our diet, Japanese produce significant amounts only of rice and depend on imports for almost all other cereal products. Now some people say that Japan has become a leader among industrialized countries, and that a decline in self-sufficiency of grain is inevitable in any highly industrialized country. However, this shows a grave lack of understanding.
Even including rice, Japan produces less than a third of the grain it consumes. By contrast, the United States and Canada produce almost twice as much grain as they consume. France produces 150 percent of its own grain, West Germany and Italy 80 percent each, and even Britain 65 percent. By international comparison, the Japanese rate of self-sufficiency in grain is extremely low.
All the major industrialized countries except for Japan remain big agricultural producers as well. Japan buys most of its grain from such industrial giants as the United States and Canada. This would be no problem if these trade partners continue to provide Japan with wheat and soybeans indefinitely. Recently, however, there is reason to fear that the imbalance of nature could suddenly and adversely affect their crop production. In that case, Japan might be left seriously short of dietary
