Japan has started a new initiative to fight fat using the buzzword metabo, short for metabolic syndrome, a polite way of describing the tendency to gain weight as people get older. Under newly passed rules, everyone between the ages of 40 and 74 must get a check-up that measures their waist, and if the circumference is over 85 cm (33.5 inches) for men or 90 cm (35.5 inches) for women, the person will be assigned to a nutritionist who will give recommendations on diet and exercise. They’re also making some vague noises about financial penalties for companies that don’t reduce employee paunch, although I’ve lived in Japan long enough to know tatemae (an untruth made for appearance’s sake) from honne (the way things really are) when I see it. Compared to most of the rest of the world, the Japanese are far from overweight, and I’ve known 24-year-old Japanese women who had to do their clothes shopping at Gap Kids when in the U.S. to find clothes that would fit them. But as Western-style foods like the Mega Mac become more popular here, there’s widespread fear that Japanese waistlines might follow the U.S. in coming years. I talk a lot about how the Japanese like to think of themselves as a homogenous people coming from the same genetic stock (there’s another good example of tatemae by the way), but I didn’t think they believed it so fervently that the government would try to apply one set of health metrics to the entire population. Still, battling the dreaded metabo monster is certainly not a bad thing, and I believe the new focus on health in middle-age will bring families closer together as wives and children show more concern for Dad.
