#Okinawa, Japan: The place where #people have the longest #lifespan - why do they live so long?

 

Michael Gebicki

"This," says Kazumi Kayo, "is one of the reasons we Okinawans live so long." We're in the Makishi Public Market in Naha, Okinawa's capital, and she's just handed me what looks like a lump of scaly wood. Smooth and tobacco coloured, tapering to a point at both. It's katsuobushi, dried and smoked bonito tuna. To Okinawans this is catnip, a flavour enhancer that you add to soups, the pork dishes that are an Okinawan specialty and just about any other main-course dish. You can buy it pre-flaked, in which case it looks like pink, feathery wood shavings, but diligent cooks like Kayo will shave off what they need, as you would with parmesan.

Kazumi Kayo operates Yonner Food, an experience into the Okinawan way of life via the medium of Ryukyuan cuisine and culture. We've spent half an hour with her trolling through the market, admiring tuna, parrot fish, sweet potatoes, lobster, the local version of donuts and odd bits of pork.

SECRETS OF LONGEVITY

 In the kitchen of her apartment she makes us rose tea, from hibiscus flowers which unfurl prettily in our glasses. Then it's down to business as we prepare pork belly in stock with soya garnished with katsuobushi, seaweed soup and a stir fry made with goya, the bitter gourd with a pimply skin, onion, carrot, more pork, eggs and tofu.

Okinawans are famously long lived. Once past the age of 65, men can expect to live to about 84, for women it's close to 90. Per head of population, there are more centenarians on Okinawa than anywhere else, five times more than in the rest of Japan, and that's a high bar. Rates of cancer, stroke, coronary heart disease and depression are well below the average for advanced economies yet they don't go to gyms nor do they jog. Instead you can see elderly Okinawans working in their vegetable gardens, practising tai chi and riding bikes.

Food is part of the reason. It's a low-carb diet with lots of fruit, tofu, vegetables and seaweed. Rather than seafood, the No. 1 source of protein is pork, and not just the fatty pork belly but also pig's trotters, roasted pork ribs and pork ears, served thinly sliced, simmered slowly and dressed in sake vinaigrette. But is it just down to food?

LOW CARB DIET?

"Maybe it's just happiness," according to Chris Dong, my guide, a former US Marine who met his Japanese wife when he was stationed on Okinawa, and stayed. "Okinawans are bonding, social animals, they spend a lot of time with family and friends, and they're incredibly supportive."

Okinawans' longevity is not a given. Kazumi Kayo, in her 50s, tells me hers is the first generation of Okinawans that will not live as long as their parents. "Traditional food was also medicine," she says, "and it's slow food. Now people have less time so they go for convenience foods and that means a less healthy diet and we're seeing more and more health problems."

Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyu Islands, the semi-circular archipelago of over 150 islands stretched between southern Japan and Taiwan.

In historic times the rulers of Okinawa owed their allegiance to the Chinese emperor, not to the bit-players in Japan. In Shuri Castle, former seat of the supreme ruler of Okinawa, a diorama shows a new ruler being anointed by emissaries from China. Until given the tick by China, he was a ruler in waiting. In the early 1600s the island was invaded by samurai sent by Japan's powerful Satsuma clan, the beginning of a slow but steady incorporation of the 

ATTITUDE AFFECTS HEALTH

Another facet of Okinawan culture that traces its origins to China is the noble art of karate, open hand fighting. Chinese martial arts were first introduced around 1400 and when the Satsuma samurai banned weapons in the wake of their invasion, Okinawan karate put on a spurt. According to popular belief it was also this ban on weaponry that gave birth to the even more deadly martial art of kobudo, which uses farm and fishing implements including staves, oars and the chain-linked nunchaku to lethal effect.

 

Tetsuhiro Hokama is the director of the Okinawa Prefecture Karate Museum, found on the second floor of Hokama Sensei's dojo. It's a fascinating collection of photos, books and weaponry as well as a chance to peek at the classes that Hokama conducts for students who come from all over the world. Hokama's specialty is kyusho, attacking nerve points, which allows a small opponent to paralyse a much larger one. It also involves a severe toughening up exercise to withstand blows, also designed to weaponise elbows, hands, feet and knees. Just watching the pounding that goes on in the warm-up is painful.

In Naha, the Dojo bar is tribute to the fighting arts of Okinawa operated by British-born James Pankiewicz, a karate aficionado. It's a favourite hangout for expats as well as the local Okinawan martial arts community and Pankiewicz is the man to know if you've come here to work on your karate, or just absorb the atmosphere. The Dojo Bar is just as renowned for its range of British draught beers, wines and awomori-based drinks, cure-alls for any martial arts related disorders. Just don't go looking to fight.

BENEFITS OF MARTIAL ARTS

Although its people speak Japanese, go to bathhouses and arrange their empty footwear with geometric precision, Okinawa is not Japan. Okinawa is more chilled, less workaholic and less self conscious than the rest of Japan. It's where Japan takes its shirt off, a subtropical island with palm trees and flaming bougainvillea and diving on the to-do list. The flight in to Naha Airport takes you over a mottled sea dotted with coral reefs. Hawaiian style shirts are popular, and it was Okinawans living in Hawaii who introduced the splashy floral patterned shirt to the world. While Japan was historically isolationist, Okinawa was outward looking and multicultural.

"You should see our whales," says the man in the tourist office. "Between January and the end of March, humpback whales spend the winter here and you can see them leaping from the water."

"But I thought whale was a menu item," I said.

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