Whether you are talking about Ogimi village or any other Japanese blue zones, you are looking at people from the general public who happened to live long, they didn’t necessarily have the knowhow of longevity. When you study Japanese health and longevity, there is one element you need to include, that is the esoteric side of our culture seen in Japanese natural medicine or natural philosophy.

The people in short-lived villages were eating a lot of white rice without vegetables and seaweed, what about the people in long-lived villages? They weren’t eating white rice. Then what were they eating instead?

What were the people in short-lived villages eating, according to Dr. Shoji Kondo the author of Nihon No Chojumura Tanmeimura, Long-Lived Villages and Short-Lived Villages in Japan, who spent 36 years traveling around the island, between 1935 and 1971, visiting 990 villages and towns to investigate the diets of each place?

Dr. Shoji Kondo, the author of Nihon No Chojumura Tanmeimura, Long-Lived Villages and Short-Lived Villages in Japan, spent 36 years traveling around the island, between 1935 and 1971, visiting 990 villages and towns to investigate the diets of each place. He discovered that there were villages where many residents lived long and villages where many residents didn’t live long. He found out that there was a distinct difference between the diets of long-lived villages and short-lived villages.