My video Japanese Blue Zones’ Diet has gotten over 5000 views.
It is the most-watched video among my English videos. Japanese blue zones are long-lived areas in Japan where Dr. Shoji Kondo marked blue in his map which he made 50 years ago. Yes, he completed his research in 1971, which makes exactly 50 years ago.
Dr. Shoji Kondo was a medical professor at Tohoku University and he traveled around Japan for 36 years visiting over 990 towns and villages. He investigated long-lived areas and short-lived areas and the diets of those places.
He then put his fieldwork together into a book called Nihon No Chojumura Tanmeimura, Long-lived Villages and Short-lived Villages in Japan.
In the book, there is a map of Japan where he marked all long-lived villages as blue spots and short-lived villages as red spots. Therefore, we can call them Japanese Blue Spots, too. Anyway, it is amazing that he made this map over 30 years before Dan Buettner discovered Blue Zones.
I am so happy now that many people are watching my video. Dr. Kondo’s research is getting to known a little. I don’t think anyone knew of his fieldwork before I released my video or wrote about it in The Ikigai Diet. Even in Japan, very few people know about Dr. Shoji Kondo.
Ogimi Village in Okinawa was determined to be the longest-lived village in Japan in 1974 by Hiromich Hagiwara, Kondo’s assistant, and the co-author of Long-lived Villages and Short-lived Villages in Japan. He conducted research using Kondo’s method and concluded that Ogimi village was the village where people lived the longest that year.
In other words, without Kondo’s research, Dan Buettner wouldn’t have visited Ogimi Village, and Okinawa wouldn’t have been introduced to the world as one of the Blue Zones.
The Ikigai Diet: The Secret Japanese Diet to Health and Longevity
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