Macrobiotics Today, September/October 1994, Vol. 34, No. 5
"Macrobiotics And America's Destiny" Alex Jack
When The Cancer Prevention Diet came out ten years ago, a large publisher in Tokyo acquired the Japanese rights to the book. They had never published a macrobiotic book before and asked Michio Kushi whether they could change the menus and recipes. He asked why, and they replied that they were too Western and the average reader in Japan couldn't identify with many of the foods.
Of course, the average American has the opposite problem. At first, macrobiotics appears too Oriental. I think this mutual misperception shows that the macrobiotic way of eating, as it has developed over the last generation, is a true blend of East and West. It is simply a matter of educating people in both parts of the world to new foods - for example, brown rice, miso, and tofu on the one hand, and corn, beans, and squash on the other - that are becoming part of a new, healthful planetary culture.
From Japan
Because George Ohsawa and the first generation of modern macrobiotic teachers came from Japan, there is an Oriental cast to their teachings. The emphasis on Eastern philosophy and medicine has been valuable in helping Westerners to see and appreciate a larger world. For too long, we have ignored or discriminated against people from other traditions and cultures. From 1790 through the 1920s, it was illegal for Orientals to become citizens of the United States, and in the early 1940s Japanese-Americans were held in concentration camps on the West Coast. The use of the atomic bomb on Japan at the end of World War II had racial and ethnic overtones.
In addition to overcoming prejudice and discrimination, Oriental teachings helped us develop complementary opposite qualities within ourselves. Macrobiotic teachings from Japan, like yoga teachings from India and martial arts from China, tend to focus on self-development and the inner life, enabling us to become more artistic, spiritual, and intuitive. By the same token, modern scientific and technological innovations have helped Easterners to become more rational, materialistic, and analytical and thus develop more fully.
It is natural to be attracted to our complementary opposite. Many Westerners are drawn to macrobiotics precisely because of its Oriental mystique, just as modern Orientals are put off by it. As Jesus observed in the Gospel of Thomas, "A prophet is without honor in his own country, and a physician cannot heal those who know him." Similars attract and likes repel. We would much rather follow teachers and healers from some far away country than someone who grew up and went to school with us or a family member. The dynamics of yin and yang enable us to understand why America is turning into its opposite and becoming the leader of the international macrobiotic, holistic, and environmental community, while China and Japan are leading the world technologically.
However, our attraction for the Far East can easily sour. As in any romance, we begin to have unrealistic expectations after elevating our macrobiotic mentors on a pedestal. I think this is happening in the macrobiotic community in America and Europe today. We are experiencing culture shock. We are turning against Oriental teachings and teachers in direct proportion to our uncritical acceptance of everything Eastern in the past.
Love - including the yin/yang variety - is blind. The best cure for romantic entanglements of this kind is travel. Visiting Japan, China, or another Oriental culture quickly dispels the notion that these societies are perfect. The traveler discovers that there are many wonderful aspects to these countries, but at the same time there are many problems and shortcomings. Usually the traveler learns to sift the grain (the spirit of a place) from the chaff (the masks and mannerisms of its inhabitants) and returns with a deeper appreciation of his or her own culture. To become truly grounded, we need to discover and appreciate our own heritage. The Japanese/Oriental flavor to modern macrobiotics helps us to deepen the connection with our own culture, traditions, and ancestry. It offers a trajectory and new perspective on things in the West we have long taken for granted. In rediscovering our own roots, we are better able to develop our uniqueness and originality, and our life acquires an authority that allows us to guide and advise others. We discover our true voice.
Developing roots in our native soil is not to be confused with patriotism or nationalism. The problems we face today - epidemics of infectious and degenerative disease, the spread of crime and drugs, the outbreak of tribal and ethnic wars, and environmental destruction - are interconnected, and modern nation-states are the major obstacle to global harmony and peace. Japan and America are convenient fictions, as the recent breakup of the U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, and other sovereign nations reminds us. The emerging environmental concept of bioregions is a more natural way of mapping the world than drawing political or geographical boundaries. Our task, as George Ohsawa and Michio Kushi repeatedly emphasized, is to become world citizens - to transcend all artificial divisions of race, religion, class, and ethnicity and see ourselves as brothers and sisters of one planet.
The Natural Way of Life
Macrobiotics is simply the natural way of life of human beings on earth. It embraces East and West, but is neither Eastern nor Western. It unifies North and South, but is boundless. Macrobiotics is universal and comprehensive. It cannot be identified with any one civilization, culture, religion, or food. However, because everyone eats slightly differently, experiences a different climate and environment, and receives slightly different celestial energy, macrobiotics takes a multiplicity of shapes and forms.
Macrobiotics in Japan is necessarily different than macrobiotics in America because the soil, the air, the water, the radiation received from the sun, moon, stars, and far galaxies is different. Similarly, macrobiotics on the East Coast is different than macrobiotics on the West Coast. Macrobiotics in Boston is different than macrobiotics in Becket. Macrobiotics in Hinsdale, where our family lives - a small town ten miles from Becket - is different still, because the elevation is lower (about 300 feet vs. 1200), the town is more densely populated (two general stores vs. one), and the artificial electromagnetic radiation is more concentrated (Hinsdale has cable TV, whereas Becket does not). I am sure the same holds true for macrobiotics as practiced in Oroville vs. the San Francisco Bay, for macrobiotics in Tokyo vs. Hokkaido.
Yet despite our differences, we share many similarities. Because whole cereal grains constitute our principal food, and vegetable quality food is our main supplementary food, we can easily understand and communicate with each other. Essentially we are on the same wave length and are developing a similar mind and spirit. It is this awareness, along with physical health, that modern macrobiotics has to share with the world. Long before the Berlin Wall fell, macrobiotic people in East and West Germany had become brothers and sisters. In war-torn Beirut, Christians and Muslims eating macrobiotically came together in love and harmony while their neighbors fought with tanks and mortars. Other examples could be cited.
The biggest division in the world today is that between East and West. Because of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and the postwar cooperation between the U.S. and Japan, we have grown accustomed to thinking that the primary threat to peace was ideological: the struggle between Communism and Capitalism. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, some see the emergence of religious fundamentalism, particularly in the Middle East, as the challenge. But as we enter a new century, it is clear that the relation between East and West will assume center stage.
In the East, there is China, with the world's largest population and most rapidly developing economy; Japan, now the world's mightiest industrial power; the newly rich societies of Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Korea; and India, whose new free-market economy may transform decades of poverty. In the West, there is Europe, which is inching toward political and economic union; Russia, which may take a generation to stabilize; Eastern Europe, which is also in the throes of recovery; and the United States, which is undergoing a multiple political, economic, and social breakdown and sexual identity crisis. Clearly, the geopolitical ki flow is changing.
Historically, the U.S. has aligned itself with the West and sided with colonial and imperial interests in Asia prior to World War II, the Chinese Revolution, and the Vietnam War. However, by virtue of its geography - midway between East and West and facing both Atlantic and Pacific - America has the historic opportunity to unify the two halves of the world. Indeed, as the melting pot of different cultures, it may be the only power that can interpret and integrate the unique needs and aspirations of the world's nearly two hundred separate states.
The alternative is folly, as Richard Nixon warned the American people just before he died. He cautioned President Clinton from imposing Western political standards on China in exchange for favored nation status, warning that in a few years China's economy will be greater than ours and Beijing might be inclined to dictate to us about human rights violations in Harlem, Los Angeles, and Chicago before it grants us trading privileges. Recent events in Japan indicate that a generation of political stability is over. Tensions over rice imports - or any one of dozens of other trade issues - could reverse the thaw between Washington and Tokyo into a new Cold War between our two cultures. Scenarios like these - unthinkable just a few years ago - can no longer be dismissed as just the stuff of pop movies and pulp novels.
In this volatile, extremely critical era now beginning, macrobiotic people in Japan and the United States have a special responsibility to work together and see that friendship and understanding prevail. We also have a responsibility to interpret and translate for our European, Asian, African, and Latin American neighbors and quicken the spread of macrobiotics in these societies. As macrobiotic friends and families, we live in two worlds - the world of grains and vegetables and the world of meat and sugar. Because most of us grew up eating hamburgers and French fries, ice cream and soft drinks, we understand the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of the modern way of eating that is now worldwide and can sympathize with all those who suffer from them.
The macrobiotic community has no parliament, no army, no treasury, no social ministries, and no courts. We have just the unifying principle by which we work, cook, study, play, and heal. Yet we are the de facto government of the future world. In our daily lives, each one of us is - or should be acting as - an ambassador of personal and planetary health and peace.
The real source of the divisions in the world today is not geography or ideology, but biology - our daily way of life, including daily way of eating. Macrobiotic people - as dwellers if not eaters in two worlds - are uniquely bilingual and can act as translators and peacemakers among the rapidly shifting geopolitical, economic, social, and cultural blocs. This may be the true Providential reason why macrobiotics came to America from Japan - to be a bridge between East and West, the traditional and modern, the intuitive and the analytical. Ultimately, a healthy diet - combining foods from East and West - and a comprehensive planetary view that unifies all opposites will enable humanity to pass through this evolutionary crisis into the light of a new world.
End of Article
Author bio-statement: Alex Jack teaches healthcare at the Kushi Institute and is director of the One Peaceful World Society. He is the author or co-author of several books including The Cancer Prevention Diet, Amber Waves of Grain: American Macrobiotic Cooking, and Let Food Be Thy Medicine.
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