WHO WAS GEORGE OHSAWA?




George Ohsawa was born Yukikazu Sakurazawa into a Japanese peasant family in 1893. In early adulthood many of his family were killed by tuberculosis but he escaped the disease through the treatment of Dr Sagen Ishizuka of Tokyo who advocated a return to traditional Japanese dietary practices. He subsequently joined and studied in the Shoku-yo Kai (Food Cure Society) which had been founded by students of Dr Ishizuka. The tenets of the society were that (1) most disease is caused by faulty diet and that (2) most disease can be cured by correct diet. The Society extolled the virtues of traditional Asian foods and medicine over those increasingly being introduced into Japanese society from the West.

In the 1920s a zealous Sakurazawa took this message to Europe. He settled in Paris and adopted the name 'George Ohsawa', the surname being a play on the French "oh, ça va" meaning "I'm doing fine" in response to the question 'How are you?' (It seems that for a while this was all the French he knew - "oh, ça va" - and it stuck as a pseudo-Japanese name.) It was in France that he developed Dr Ishizuka's ideas further and relabelled them "macrobiotics" (great life) a word he borrowed from earlier European sources. A pioneer, he was instrumental in bringing oriental food and medicine to the West. In truth, he developed Dr Ishizuka's insights into an entire new cuisine - a reconstructed wholefood cuisine for modern times with its roots in Zen Temple cookery. 

Back in Japan, he opposed Japanese militarism in World War 2 and was imprisoned and sentenced to death but escaped the punishment. After the war he contracted a severe disease that weakened his heart during a humanitarian mission to Africa. He died of heart failure in 1966. 

His writings are severe, prophetic and often apocalyptic. His world view was shaped by the experience of the war, the impact of the atomic bomb on Japanese society and the threat of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. He believed that a return to traditional foods and medicines - especially the rich traditions of the East - could save mankind from the degradations of industrialism. He was an early advocate of health foods, organic farming and alternative medicine and pioneered the introduction of traditional Asian philosophy to the West.

Ohsawa was a restless innovator. Amongst other things he developed various compounds and ingredients that are used in cuisine macrobiotique. As a philosopher, the Taoist concepts of yin and yang were at the heart of his thinking. In some ways we might say that he reinterpreted Chinese Traditional Medicine (CTM) through the vehicle of traditional Japanese foods.

His wife, Lima, who continued his work after his death, lived to 102 years old. She and many of his students - notably Michio Kushi - worked to further refine macrobiotics and to bring it to a wider community.

Although there are various institutes and accredited courses there is no official macrobiotic orthodoxy; rather, numerous students of George Ohsawa, and then a new generation of students after them, have developed their own approaches according to their needs and intuitions. This is as Oshawa intended. Macrobiotics is an adventure. 

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