This article is from the WeChat public account: Eat Melon Planet (ID: chiguaxingqiu) < span class = "text-remarks">, author: yogurt foam did not
Which Japanese or Chinese is taller is an enduring topic. On this issue, both countries have shown a modest character in East Asia. Most Chinese netizens are convinced that the “Japanese are now higher than the Chinese.” The Nikkei Chinese website came out in September last year to say that Japanese are better than Chinese Gao “is a rumor.” But According to the “World Population Review” in 2020, the Japanese today are taller than the Chinese, especially men, more than 2cm taller.
It doesn’t seem easy to reach a conclusion. The measurement results of different institutions, different age groups, and different ages, it is easy to draw opposite conclusions regardless of which factor changes. Although it is measured at about one meter and seven meters, this seems to be a major issue that is enough to conjure the rise and fall of the National Games.
It seems that Japanese who are already Buddhist are still concerned about this issue. The Japanese were also keenly aware that the Japanese had once been taller, and now they have become shorter.
In the past 100 years, the height of Japanese adults has increased by about 15 centimeters in accordance with the improvement of living standards in the same way as other countries in the world. However, people born after 1980 have watched themselves become shorter.
In 2018, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community H (Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health) studies show that Japanese adults born in 1978 and 1979 have an average height of 171.4cm for men and 158.5cm for women; while men born in 1996 have an average height of 170.82cm when they reach adulthood, The woman is 158.31cm, which is 0.64cm and 0.21cm shorter than before.
As for the reason, the research team of the National Center for Child Health and Development in Tokyo analyzed the growth data of 3.15 million adults and concluded that the shortness may be due to the fact that the Japanese initially had a lighter weight than before -More and more babies are born with less than 5 pounds.
△ Baby: I ca n’t laugh
According to data from the Ministry of Health of Japan, in the second half of the 1970s, the proportion of low-weight Japanese babies was 5.1%, but it increased rapidly in the following 30 years and reached 9.7% in 2007. At the same time, researchers have found that there is a high inverse correlation between the proportion of low-weight babies and adult height. The lighter at birth, the greater the probability that height will be affected after growing up.
Now that babies become lighter during birth, is related to social and cultural changes.
On the one hand, Japanese women are also very beautiful now, and they will subconsciously control their weight during pregnancy. On the other hand, even if you do n’t want to control, Japanese obstetricians and gynecologists will strictly monitor the weight change of pregnant women and control their weight during pregnancy Increase within 20 pounds. In this way, the baby can’t get fat.
However, the mother ’s weight change during pregnancy may not explain the whole picture. The Japanese shortness may also be related to the “mixed blood dividend” after World War II in the last century. After all, genes are more likely to determine physical fitness.
During the Second World War, many Japanese women had forced physical relationships with the U.S. forces in Japan and even voluntarily mated with the latter. Due to the large number of U.S. troops stationed, more than 200,000 hybrids were eventually produced.The number of children, the final height of the remaining millions of babies in the same period will inevitably be pulled up by these children.
△ Asahi Shimbun 1952 report
And this mixed “dividend” did not last long. After the U.S. military gradually withdrew and the Japanese economy developed, the nation ’s self-confidence increased, and interracial unions gradually decreased.
Actually, the height of Japanese people has also risen and fallen since ancient times.
From the Japanese Jomon period to the Heian period, the average height of men grew from about 158cm to 163cm, and the length of women from 149cm to 152com; and since the Heian period, the height of the Japanese has continued to decline, and in the Edo period, Japan The average height of men fell to a minimum of 155 to 156 cm, and that of women was about 143 to 145 cm.
During this period, the height of Japanese military generals was also very eye-catching. For example, Toyotomi Hideyoshi is about 140cm tall, Tokugawa Ieyasu 159cm, Tokugawa ’s first shogun, Sengoku Lubu, and Bunta Tadori are estimated to be about 140cm tall. The “Japanese military force god” Takeda Shingen is only 153cm tall, which differs from the image of a general in a film and television work.
But at that time, The overall level of height was related to the nutritional intake of calcium and protein in the diet .
The Japanese had a habit of eating meat around the 4th and 5th centuries AD, that is, they drank the mountain and sea food to eat, and the average height also reached about 163 cm. Later, with the introduction of Buddhism, which prohibits killing, in the 6th century, most people stopped eating meat. Only fishing for food led to a significant lack of animal protein intake. In the Edo period, the shogun also introduced a ban on eating meat. In the beginning of the 19th century, the average Chinese in the Qing Dynasty was about 165cm tall, while the Japanese were only 155cm tall.
The larger changes occurred after the Meiji Restoration .
Meiji Restoration (1868) After Japan opened its eyes to the world, it once sent people to study in the West. During the inspection, the Japanese felt deeply inferior when they saw the heights of foreign people. Even when they came to China, they found that they were not as high as the Chinese. In the end, Japan analyzed the reason and concluded that they were not strong enough, probably because they ate less meat.
So Japan “ideally out of Asia and into Europe” and began to learn how to eat bread, milk, beef, and bacon in the West, and these foods have gradually entered ordinary people’s families. The influence of European food culture was gradually increasing, and they began to eat meat such as pigs and cattle again, and their height also grew.
After the Second World War, Japan ’s economy gradually recovered and began to develop at a high speed, and living conditions improved. The Japanese government also introduced various policies to promote the healthy growth of the people, such as the “Milk Plan” and the “School Feeding Law” and “Sports Promotion”. The Law, etc., stipulates that students must drink enough milk at school every day, about 200ml per day for elementary school students and 300ml per day for junior high school students, and the nutritional ratio must be balanced in the diet, mandatory exercise time, etc. These are also the reasons why the Japanese continued to grow from the 1950s to the 1980s after World War II.
Although the Japanese are slightly shorter than forty years ago, looking at the world, it is not just themselves who become shorter. For example, in the United States, in 1914, men in the United States ranked third in the world and women ranked fourth in the world. The United States is roughly 40th.
▲ The picture shows the tallest and shortest country for men and women in the world
But when it comes to who is shortest in Asian countries, the voice of Japan is much more mentioned than that of China. In this respect, it is likely that the impression that the “short” design is prominent in Japan has reinforced this impression.
For example, the low curtains in Japanese homes, full-length mirrors with incomplete photos, the grips of the Tokyo subway, and the low door frames of old tea shops in the streets-after you walk in, some bosses will tell you not to touch Headed.
These designs are recommended by many foreign netizens who have been to Japan. If you are more than 6 feet tall, please wear a helmet when living in Japan, otherwise you may face a situation similar to the following picture: a red mark on your head .
Of course, this is also evidence of your height.
Actually, these designs were not related to height originally, but for the purpose of saving resources : 127 million people in Japan were crowded on 4 not-so-large islands, and each person was given too much space Limited, I gradually learned to make the most of them, and many ingenious Japanese-style home space-saving designs were born.
The height of the Japanese rises and bounces back, perhaps to keep these exquisite designs forever.
This article is from WeChat public account: Eat Melon Planet (ID: chiguaxingqiu) , author: yogurt did not foam