George Ohsawa

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Young Ohsawa in Paris, 1920

George Ohsawa (born Nyoichi Sakurazawa (櫻澤 如一); October 18, 1893 – April 23, 1966) was a Japanese author and proponent of alternative medicine who was the founder of the macrobiotic diet. When living in Europe he went by the pen names of Musagendo Sakurazawa, Nyoiti Sakurazawa, and Yukikazu Sakurazawa. He also used the French first name Georges while living in France, and his name is sometimes also given this spelling. He wrote about 300 books in Japanese and 20 in French. He defined health on the basis of seven criteria: lack of fatigue, good appetite, good sleep, good memory, good humour, precision of thought and action, and gratitude.[1]

Life

Ohsawa was born into a poor samurai family in Shingu City, Wakayama Prefecture. He had no money for higher education. Around 1913, he joined the Shokuiku movement, studying with Manabu Nishibata, a direct disciple of the late Sagen Ishizuka, in Tokyo. William Dufty describes the background ("Nyoiti" is a variant transcription of "Nyoichi"):[2]

The gradual introduction of sugar into the Japanese diet brought in its wake the beginning of Western diseases. A Japanese midwife, trained in the techniques of Western medicine as a nurse, fell ill and was abandoned as incurable by the Western doctors she had espoused. Three of her children died the same way. The fourth, Nyoiti Sakurazawa, rebelled at the notion of dying of tuberculosis and ulcers in his teens. He took up the study of ancient Oriental medicine which had been officially outlawed in Japan. Sakurazawa was attracted to the unorthodox career of a famous Japanese practitioner, Dr. Sagen Ishizuka. Thousands of patients had been cured by Ishizuka (through traditional use of food) after they had been abandoned as incurable by the new medicine of the West.

Ohsawa claimed to have cured himself of tuberculosis at the age of 19 by applying the ancient Chinese concept of yin and yang as well as the teachings of Sagen Ishizuka.[3]

Later he traveled in Europe and began to spread his philosophy in Paris. It was in this period that he adopted his pen name "Ohsawa", supposedly from the French Oh, ça va,[citation needed] which means "All right" or "I'm doing fine" as a reply to the question "how are you doing?"). After several years, he returned to Japan to start a foundation and gather recruits for his now formalized philosophy. In 1931, he published The Unique Principle explaining the yin and yang order of the universe.[4]

After drawing attention during

General MacArthur, he moved his institution to a remote area in the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture
.

In 1961, he wrote Zen Macrobiotic, referring to the

Christoph Hufeland
in Germany since 1796. Subsequently, the philosophy of Ohsawa has been referred to as macrobiotics.

While he was in France, Ohsawa wrote a number of books in French, which were published by Vrin Publishers in Paris. Among them were L'Ere Atomique et la Philosophie d'Extrême-Orient (The Atomic Age and the Philosophy of the Far East), written during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this book, as in all the books Ohsawa wrote, he devoted considerable space to explaining how macrobiotics can shed light on many social problems as well as the causes of war, and help bring about a world in which war will be seen as an outcome of an error of judgment, and discarded as an effective solution to social conflict.[5]

Ohsawa also created a stir by predicting the deaths of several notable people, including

assassination of President Kennedy led Tom Wolfe to write:[7][8]

Abdul Karim Kassem, Ngo Dinh Diem
, and President Kennedy, all sanpaku and, now, shot to death, all destroyed by the fate of the sanpaku, which is more than coincidence and should be an alarm signal to men and nations, say the Macrobiotics, for thus it has been demonstrated by their leader, George Ohsawa, Japanese prophet of the Unique Principle.

This article caught the attention of William Dufty, who, finding relief in the brown rice diet recommended by Ohsawa, became an advocate of macrobiotics, and traveled to Paris to meet with Ohsawa and publisher Felix Morrow. Ohsawa handed Dufty a package, and said, "Here is a lifetime of writing. Do your best with them. It's your turn."[9] In 1965 Morrow's firm, University Books, published Ohsawa's writings under the provocative title You Are All Sanpaku.

Death

Ohsawa died of a

heart attack in 1966 at the age of 72.[10]

Books

The following bibliography of the writings of George Ohsawa is from page 218 of You Are All Sanpaku:

Translations by Ohsawa

  • T. Nakayama (1934): Acupuncture et médecine chinoise vérifiées au Japon, Paris : Le Francois.

Japanese works

  • Macrobiotics
  • History of China From 2000 B.C. Until Today
  • Franklin: A physiological and biological biography
  • Gandhi: A physiological and biological biography
  • Clara Schumann and Her Father: A physiological and biological Study
  • Translation and critique: The Encounter Between East and West by F. S. C. Northrup
  • Translation and critique: Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrell
  • The Fatality of Science

See also

  • Japanese resistance to the Empire of Japan in World War II

References

  1. ISBN 0-7126-7136-6
  2. ^ William Dufty (1975), Sugar Blues, page 84
  3. ISBN 0-89529-616-0
    . 1912: Ohsawa re-establishes his health using Sagen Ishizuka's diet of whole brown rice, fresh vegetables, sea salt, and oil.
  4. ^ Georges Ohsawa (1931) The Unique Principle, link from Google Books
  5. ISBN 2711641341
  6. ^ Tom Wolfe (August 18, 1963) "Kennedy to Bardot, Too Much Sanpaku", New York Herald Tribune
  7. ^ Tom Wolfe (January 12, 1964) New York Herald Tribune Sunday Magazine
  8. ^ William Dufty (1965) Introduction to You Are All Sanpaku, page 10
  9. ^ You Are All Sanpaku, page 39
  10. ^ Michio Kushi & Alex Jack (2003) Diet for a Strong Heart: Michio Kushi's Macrobiotic Dietary Guidelines, St. Martin's Griffin.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to George Ohsawa.
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