Okinawa Longevity

Japanese people have what is probably the world’s longest natural life span. On average, someone born and raised in Japan will live to 82. This compares well to, say, the US average longevity of 77. Moreover, the people in Japan with the greatest probability for long and healthy lives live in Okinawa.

How cool is that?

One conjecture is that island life is so much fun that Okinawans don’t want to leave. They have family. They have friends. They let the good times roll. Another is that they get lots of exercise. They walk and do their errands on foot. They raise their own vegetables and work in their gardens.

I know of at least one Okinawan great-grandmother who offered her visiting family a fruit called tan-kan, which is a little like a tangerine. One guest offered to go into the kitchen and bring the tan-kan out for her. Great Granny, in her 90s, insisted on getting it herself. But the fruit wasn’t in the kitchen. It was still on the tree in her backyard. She climbed the tree and picked a dozen tankan while the family cheered her on.

The Okinawan diet, too, gets a lot of credit for the people’s longevity. There is a longevity story that I am very curious about, and it concerns an expedition from China made in ancient days to “The Land of the Immortals” to acquire “the fruit of eternal life”. No one knows for sure where that land was, or what the fruit was, but I often think it was Okinawa and the fruit was something like a tan-kan.