This article gives my readers a brief introduction to the Japanese Macrobiotic Diet, which includes my own personal experiences with it from my many years of living in Japan. I introduce my readers to the basic principles of Yin and Yang that underlie the Macrobiotic Diet, and explain how Japanese Macrobiotics and the Macrobiotic Diet served to pave the way for the popularization of Oriental Medicine as well as its eventual licensing in the United States.
Introduction: The Japanese and Their Food
The Japanese are famous for being healthy, fastidious eaters. In an era in which whole grains, high fiber and low fat were the ideals, the traditional Japanese diet, which centered around fish, beans, and soy products as their main protein sources, was considered to be the ideal by many nutritionists. The traditional Japanese diet was also varied or spiced up with many odd and distinctive delicacies – health foods in their own right, which were distinctively Japanese in their overall tone and flavor. So distinctive and different is the traditional Japanese diet that many globe-trotting Japanese tourists who finally arrive back home in Japan often report that they missed their own Japanese food more than anything else about their homeland. Furusato no aji! Proclaim many signs and banners advertising home style or home cooked meals. Washoku, or literally, “harmony food” is how the Japanese themselves refer to their own native cuisine, since Yamato, a traditional name for Japan, literally means, “Great Harmony”. Calling their own native cuisine “harmony food” also serves to accentuate just how much a Japanese person feels like a fish out of water when deprived of traditional Japanese food.
Another thing that foreigners, or gaijin, fail to adequately appreciate about Japanese cuisine, is how many different and varied genres of food it contains. Sushi has been all the rage here in the United States, but Sushi is just a small part of Japanese cuisine. There is also Nabemono, or pot cuisine, which is very popular in the wintertime; Yakimono, or grilled specialties; Chazuke, or rice dishes steeped in tea. Ramen, which has also become popular in the West, is basically the Japanese version of the Chinese Lo Mien, or thin egg noodle soup dishes. If you really want to see how much of a Yamato damashi, or Japanese soul or spirit, you have, you can order a bowl of Uni, or the innards of a Sea Urchin; but be forewarned – they say that you can taste the whole ocean – and I really mean the whole ocean – in a bowl of Uni. Another interesting dish you can try if your stomach is up for it is Natto, which is basically soybeans fermented until they’re rotten. Two favorites of mine are Nasu Dengaku, which is grilled eggplant smothered in a sweet miso sauce, and Unagi Domburi, or grilled eels over rice. Eels are often eaten during the hot dog days of July, when it is said that the eels give your body extra strength and vigor to make it through the hot summer months.
What Is the Japanese Macrobiotic Diet?
In China and Japan, there are long-established traditions of vegetarian eating; usually, these have been associated with Buddhism and Buddhist monks. Instead of eating white or polished rice, which is favored by most worldly Chinese and Japanese people, the diet of the Buddhist monks revolved around brown rice or whole, unrefined rice, which the Japanese call Genmai. Whether you’re eating brown rice or white rice, the bowl of rice around which the whole meal revolves is called Gohan; the various side dishes that are eaten along with it are called Okazu. So central is rice to the diet that the generic word for a meal is also called Gohan. In Japan, the tradition of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine centering around brown rice is called Shojin Ryori. The founder of Japanese Macrobiotics is generally held to be a man named Nyoichi Sakurazawa, who simplified his name to Georges Ohsawa for the French, and then for Westerners in general. He chose to call his diet the Macrobiotic Diet because he saw it as a healthy diet that could lengthen or expand (macro) your life (bios / biotics). Most Japanese simply call the diet Genmai Seishoku, or “Brown Rice Correct Diet”. To give his diet more of an exotic flair, Georges Ohsawa would also call his diet Zen Macrobiotics, as Zen was definitely something that was trending back in the 60s and 70s, when the diet was popular. Georges Ohsawa wrote that as a young man, he was very sickly, but then poverty forced him to enter a Buddhist monastery and eat a diet of brown rice, miso soup, pickled vegetables, sea vegetables and so on, after which he regained his health. “Thank God I was poor!” he writes.
The basic principle around which the Macrobiotic Diet is based is the balancing of the two complementary opposites of Yin and Yang. Brown Rice, being a complete, whole grain, forms the center or mainstay of the Macrobiotic Diet because it is seen to be the most inherently balanced in its Yin and Yang qualities. The other staples of the Macrobiotic Diet fall either on the more Yin side or the more Yang side of Brown Rice, but they do not fall too far afield of Brown Rice to avoid tipping the scales of Yin and Yang too far in either direction. After Brown Rice, the main auxiliary staples of the Macrobiotic Diet are steamed vegetables, pickled vegetables, sea vegetables; miso, tofu and other soy products, adzuki beans, squash and so on. Occasionally a little fried food like Tempura, or maybe a little fish, is included to round out the diet a bit. But usually the Macrobiotic Diet centers on Brown Rice supplemented by these auxiliary staples.
For those with gluten sensitivities, or fears about gluten, you can rest assured that there are no gluten problems with Brown Rice, which is a very balanced whole grain. However, those with gluten issues should stay away from Glutinous Rice, or Mochi Gome as it is known in Japanese, as this variety of rice does indeed have a high gluten content. Mochi, or Omochi, are traditional Japanese glutinous rice cakes that are often eaten on festive occasions like New Year. For those with no gluten issues, Omochi rice cakes are quite a treat, especially smothered with melted butter and honey!
Obviously, if you’re going to follow a diet centered around balancing Yin and Yang, it behooves you to have a very good or clear idea of what these two concepts stand for, and mean. Although Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM. Also utilizes these two opposite yet complementary concepts of Yin and Yang, the Macrobiotic conception of Yin and Yang is slightly different from that of TCM; you might say that the Macrobiotic conception of Yin and Yang is more narrow and rigid. In Macrobiotics, Yin is held to be more softening, passive and expansive, whereas Yang is more active, dry and contracting or consolidating. Yin is cooling moistening and dissipating, whereas Yang is warming, drying and energizing. Although it could be argued that Yang is slightly favored in Macrobiotics, the best basic strategy for building overall health and vitality is to emphasize or build the center, cultivating harmony and balance between Yin and Yang.
It’s Only Natural: Basic Signposts or Guidelines for Yin and Yang
At its heart, you could say that Macrobiotics is basically a system of Natural Philosophy, as is Greek Medicine. And a Macrobiotic counselor is just educating or coaching his or her clients in the Laws of Nature, as they apply to the fundamental dietary principles of Yin and Yang. What follows is my brief and introductory guidelines to Yin and Yang in Macrobiotics:
Sugar is Yin, and Salt is Yang. Although natural sweeteners like honey or maple syrup are also Yin, refined white sugar is Yin in the extreme, and very unbalancing. Similarly, although refined white table salt is extremely Yang and unbalancing, Macrobiotics uses natural Sea Salt, which is much more whole and balanced.
Vegetables are slightly to the Yin side of Brown Rice, and green, leafy vegetables are more dispersing and Yin than root vegetables or squash, for example. Raw vegetables and salads are much more Yin than cooked or steamed vegetables, because cooking is a process of applying heat, which is Yang, to foods. My Japanese homestay mother explained it to me this way: Raw vegetables and other raw foods, although natural, have this quality of being Aokusai, or literally “green-stinky”, which is removed by cooking, In Macrobiotics, as in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the excessive consumption of cold, raw foods weakens the Spleen / Pancreas, the main organ of digestion and assimilation; in terms of Greek Medicine, you could say that overconsumption of these cold, raw foods weakens Pepsis and the Digestive Fire.
Fruits are generally much more Yin than vegetables, since they are predominantly sweet and sour, which are Yin tastes in Macrobiotics. And among fruits, fruits that grow in cooler temperate climates, such as Apples and Pears, are more balanced and Yang than are tropical fruits like Bananas, which are more Yin and cooling in nature, since they have to maintain a balance or homeostasis with their warm or hot tropical climate. What really brought this natural truth home to me was when I ate a Banana right in the middle of a frigidly cold winter in Romania; instantly, I felt chilled to the bone.
Greek Medicine’s equivalent of Yin and Yang are the Four Basic Qualities of Hot, Cold, Dry and Wet. A living organism – in this case, a plant – has to maintain a state of dynamic equilibrium or homeostasis with its natural environment. Take Burdock root, which the Japanese call Gobo, for example: Because this plant grows in damp, marshy soil, its basic nature is to assist the body in throwing off excess moisture and dampness, which it does naturally in order to maintain a state of balance or homeostasis with its environment. And so, Burdock root is a mild diuretic that drains dampness and toxins from the body. Another indicator of Burdock’s Yin nature according to Macrobiotics is its large, expansive leaves; dispersion and expansion are Yin qualities in Macrobiotics, and generally, plants that grow very quickly tend to be more Yin in nature than plants that grow much more slowly. A good example of a plant that is very Yang natured because it grows very slowly is the tonic herb Ginseng.
The Macrobiotic Diet does not include much meat; occasionally, a little fish may be taken, preferably cooked, as this is an important source of protein in the traditional Japanese diet. However, fish is often consumed with spicy condiments like Japanese green Horseradish, or Wasabi, as well as aromatic Shiso or Perilla leaves, which is a specific herb for detoxifying the cold, heavy toxins of fish. It must be remembered that fish live in a very cold, wet aquatic environment, which is very different from our own, and are hence acclimatized to it in ways that we aren’t. And so, in taking fish into the body, we must also take some remedial condiments to neutralize its toxins. Generally, there are three categories of foods that the Macrobiotic Diet excludes or tends to shy away from, and these are sweets, especially containing refined white sugar; meat, especially red meat; and cheese and dairy products. You could say that for various reasons, the Macrobiotic Diet sees these foods as being very extreme and unbalanced.
It’s all really quite simple: In Macrobiotics, the laws of Yin and Yang are basically nothing more than the Laws of Nature. After learning these laws, and internalizing them by following the Macrobiotic Diet, you will discover that your body has a natural or innate awareness of or sensitivity to these natural laws. By following an unregulated and unbalanced diet of unnatural and overly refined and processed foods, the body’s natural sensitivities are perverted or obscured; a return to the Laws of Nature, and the Macrobiotic Diet, will remedy this situation. In the traditional Japanese spiritual paradigm, the mirror of the Soul just needs to be cleaned and polished.
A Visit to the Fukuen Macrobiotic Restaurant in Downtown Osaka
A popular place to hang out for us Gaijin or Gringos who wanted to eat healthy way back in the day, back in the 70s, which could be called the Golden Age of English teaching in Japan, was a Macrobiotic restaurant in downtown Osaka called the Fukuen. Tucked away on a secluded back street in the heart of Osaka, it was said that Nyoichi Sakurazawa, AKA Georges Ohsawa, the founder of Macrobiotics, used to come and eat there himself. Fukuen, which means happy or lucky garden in Japanese, was a cozy, friendly little place where there was always something good and tasty cooking. Heading up the menu was the Ofukuro Teishoku, or “Mom’s Combination Meal”; actually, Ofukuro means, “Honorable Bag” in Japanese when translated literally – and one’s own mother was that “Honorable Bag” from which you exited as you entered this world.
So what exactly was in the Ofukuro Teishoku? Of course, at the center of the meal was a good hearty bowl of Brown Rice, which was sometimes spiced up with a few kernels of Hato Mugi, literally “Pigeon Barley”, which is Job’s Tears, or Coix lachryma-jobi to English speakers. Job’s Tears is used in Chinese herbal medicine as a mild osmotic diuretic that contains easily assimilable amino acids that relieve edema and improve the function of the Spleen / Pancreas by improving the osmotic concentration of the blood while ridding the organism of excess toxins. Japanese women treasure Hato Mugi because of its great ability to facilitate weight loss while beautifying the skin. Although Macrobiotic Tamari soy sauce was available to season your Brown Rice with, I preferred to season it with generous portions of Gomashio, or Sesame Salt. Gomashio is made by lightly roasting some Black Sesame seeds and grinding them up with an equal quantity of Sea Salt in a Japanese Suri Bachi, or grinding bowl. And how that Gomashio complemented and enhanced the flavor of that Brown Rice! For me, that Brown Rice and Gomashio alone would have been enough to satisfy me.
Moving on from the Brown Rice, the Job’s Tears and the Sesame Salt, we get to the various Okazu or side dish items on the combination plate. The Ofukuro Teishoku always featured a seaweed dish, and in Japanese Macrobiotics, there are many tasty varieties of seaweed, AKA Sea Vegetables, that are used. First, there is the black, stringy Hijiki, or sometimes the lighter colored Arame, or the thick, chewy Kombu, or the light and tender Wakame. Sea Vegetables are an important part of the Macrobiotic Diet because the Iodine they contain stimulates the Thyroid gland, which is so important to optimal metabolism; they also contain a full assortment vital minerals, all in easily assimilable organic form, as well as generous amounts of protein in its mucilage content, as well as the all-important vitamin B12. The Ofukuro Teishoku also contained a small side dish of Nuka Miso or Rice Bran Pickles, a bean or tofu dish, and occasionally a little serving of deep-fried vegetable Tempura. A particularly delicious treat that I wish that the Fukuen offered more often was Gomadohfu, or Sesame Tofu, which was made from Sesame Tahini that was thickened and congealed with Agar gel.
The Fukuen restaurant was in a very interesting neighborhood. Right next door, there was a center and meeting place for Shukyo Mahikari, or the Religion of the True Light, which is one of the several spiritual healing religions that have proliferated in modern Japan, the best-known of which is Reiki, which literally means miraculous or spiritual life energy. Anyway, Shukyo Mahikari would often display samples of food that had not spoiled due to treatment with its True Light in its storefront windows. Right around the corner was a store that specialized in Kampo Yaku, which is the Japanese version of Chinese herbal medicine. It was there that I purchased my first bottle of freeze-dried pills of a traditional Chinese herbal formula, Rikkunshi-toh, or the Decoction of the Six Gentlemen, used to treat Spleen Qi Deficiency complicated by the accumulation of excess phlegm and dampness. It was recommended to me by an herbal consultant at the store, and worked quite well; this marked my introduction to Chinese herbal medicine.
Macrobiotic Gurus or Sensei-Gata and the Evolution of Macrobiotics
Nyoichi Sakurazawa, AKA Georges Ohsawa, is generally credited with being the founder of Macrobiotics. When I was living in southern California, a Japanese friend of mine who served as the best man at my first wedding had been a Japanese teacher when he lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area; while living there, he told me that he had several Japanese students that were also students at Michio Kushi’s Macrobiotics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He said that their sole topic of conversation was what Michio Kushi had to eat that morning, and from this it seemed like somewhat of a cult-like atmosphere prevailed at the Kushi Institute. Anyway, Michio Kushi was the leading Guru or Sensei of Macrobiotics at the time, and he authored several books on the subject; one of the best-known of these was a pioneering work on the art of diagnosis in Macrobiotics entitled, You Are All Sanpaku. “What’s Sanpaku?”, you might ask. Sanpaku literally means, “three whites” in Japanese; this is a well-known diagnostic sign in Macrobiotics in which, in addition to the normal white areas visible to the left and right sides of the iris, there is an additional third white area visible either above or below the iris of the eye. Most people who are Sanpaku are Yin Sanpaku, with an additional white area showing below the iris; this indicates a profound and chronic exhaustion of the central nervous system. A few people exhibit Yang Sanpaku, which is often associated with chronic anger and violent tendencies or a hyperstimulation of the Sympathetic Yang branch of the autonomic nervous system. In addition to discussing Sanpaku, Kushi also discusses many other diagnostic signs involving the face, the fingernails, the ears and so on.
Another great thing about Macrobiotics is that, aside from the basic diet, many books on Macrobiotics contain a whole compendium of natural food remedies, making Macrobiotics a comprehensive system of natural food therapy as well. Among the Macrobiotic food items that also serve as natural remedies are: Umeboshi, or Japanese Pickled Plums; Renkon, or Lotus root; and Yamaimo, the Japanese Wild Mountain Yam, AKA the Dioscorea Yam, which is known as Shan Yao or Wai Shan in Chinese herbal medicine. From the evolution of Macrobiotics into the domains of diagnostics and therapeutics, it’s easy to see how Japanese Macrobiotics formed a kind of bridge into the whole field of Oriental Medicine; you might say that Macrobiotics even paved the way for the eventual legalization and licensing of Oriental Medicine in the United States. Another great Macrobiotic Sensei who made pioneering efforts in this area is Herman Aihara, whose excellent book, which I believe was entitled, Healing Ourselves, gives an excellent introduction to Chinese herbal medicine, or Kampo Yaku, from a Macrobiotic perspective. Before the advent of Macrobiotics, you might say that Oriental or East Asian health foods and holistic healing was as weird, foreign and exotic to Westerners as the Man on the Moon, so to speak; after the advent of Macrobiotics, all this stuff became relatively commonplace, and everyone was chowing down on seaweed, brown rice and tofu.
Conclusion: Is the Macrobiotic Diet Right for You?
There are a lot of people who would like to swear off meat, or at least eat a lot less of it, and eat and live a healthier lifestyle. Becoming a vegetarian isn’t just a simple matter of eliminating meat from the standard meat-centered diet. The new vegetarian diet you must create for yourself must be, above all, nutritionally complete and balanced. In other words, a new balance must be created, dietarily speaking, that doesn’t include meat, and therein lies the big challenge. Many might try to quit meat “cold turkey” or go straight from meat and potatoes to a strict vegan or even a raw foods vegetarian diet. Definitely, such extreme diets have their outspoken advocates, and many may even manage such a rapid and radical transition successfully – but many don’t, and I believe that they probably vastly outnumber the successful ones. The Japanese Macrobiotic Diet has stood the test of time, and has proven itself to be a nutritionally complete, well-rounded, and above all, a balanced vegetarian diet. So if you’ve tried to go vegetarian and failed, the Macrobiotic Diet just might be able to give you that sustainable balance. Depending on the particular condition of your health and the circumstances you are in, you may choose to either adhere strictly to the Macrobiotic Diet, for which I advise that you take classes or seek out the services of a Macrobiotic coach or counselor, or you may decide to keep the Macrobiotic Diet as a basic dietary core, supplementing it with other foods in a wise and judicious manner.
Scientific research on the Macrobiotic Diet in Japan and elsewhere has shown that the diet can be very effective in treating the various degenerative diseases associated with aging, like hypoglycemia, insulin resistance and blood sugar issues, including type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, as well as allergies, arthritis, and so on. If you suffer from any of these chronic degenerative disorders, I would advise you to seek the services of a Macrobiotic coach or counselor, and not attempt to go it alone. The Macrobiotic Diet has even been used to fight cancer, but I would advise that you consult with your physician or healthcare provider before committing yourself to this route, especially if you plan this to be your sole modality of therapy. Although the Macrobiotic Diet may seem to be very rigid and structured, there is sufficient flexibility within its overall framework to tailor it to specific therapeutic needs and objectives – again, preferably under the expert guidance of an experienced Macrobiotics counselor.