George Ohsawa, The Macrobiotic Movement 
Part 1

A Special Exhibit - The History of Soy Pioneers Around the World - Unpublished 
Manuscript 

by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi

©Copyright 2004 Soyinfo Center, Lafayette, California

The international macrobiotic movement was started by a remarkable and widely traveled 
Japanese, George Ohsawa, who was joined in this work in the late 1930s by his new wife, 
Lima. Ohsawa linked Oriental philosophy and diet using a new version of the ancient 
concept of yin-yang, a unique dialectical principle, which pointed at an underlying order in 
the universe, beneath its apparent diversity. The keys to Ohsawa's philosophy of diet and 
medicine were the concepts of balance and the practice of a traditional grain centered diet. 
He taught that a traditional, balanced diet was the basis of good health, upon which true 
happiness and freedom rest. He made the remarkable discovery that the age-old concept of 
grains as the principal food in the diet, a sacred food in virtually every traditional society, 
had largely vanished from the West (Ohsawa 1965). In the process of introducing 
macrobiotics to the West, Ohsawa and his followers have played a major role in 
introducing traditional East Asian soyfoods as well, although the latter comprised only a 
part of their total message. In this chapter we will emphasize their work as it applies to 
soyfoods. 

Our key source of information on the origins of macrobiotics and the life and work of 
Ohsawa is Georges Ohsawa and the Japanese Religious Tradition by Ronald E. Kotzsch 
(1981). We have drawn on it heavily, and to a lesser extent on Ichiro Matsumoto's 
biography of Ohsawa (1976, in Japanese) and "A Historical Review of the Macrobiotic 
Movement in North America" in Kushi's The Book of Macrobiotics (1977). Much of our 
information for the rest of the chapter has come from extensive interviews with leaders of 
the macrobiotic movement in the U.S., Japan, and Europe.

The Roots of Macrobiotics. Ohsawa never claimed to be the founder or originator of 
macrobiotics (a term meaning "great life or vitality"). He always gave credit to his own 
teacher, a Japanese doctor, Sagen Ishizuka, and both in turn were inspired by The Yellow 
Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Ref??), the classics of Shinto (the native Japanese 
religion), and the work of Ekiken Kaibara and Nanboku Mizuno. Manabu Nishibata, a 
disciple of Ishizuka's, also had an important influence on Ohsawa.

The Nei Ching Huang Ti or Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, probably 
written about 500 B.C., is a compilation of the medical wisdom of the ancient Chinese. It 
contends that there is a profound relationship between food, health, and disease, and that 
food is an important means of treating disease. The particular importance and power of 
cereal grains for preserving and restoring health is clearly stated. Ohsawa often quoted its 
admonition that "The true sage is concerned not with the cure of disease but with its 
prevention." Nutrition and medicine were seen as very closely related fields and health 
was considered the natural reward of a life of self-control and moderation, lived in 
conformity with the laws of Nature.

The Shinto classics such as the Kojiki (compiled in 712 A.D.) and the Nihonshoki (720 

A.D.) state that the god of food produced the "five grains" (including soybeans and azuki 
beans) out of his own body as sustenance for humans. For over a thousand years at Japan's 
most famous shrine at Ise, this deity has been worshipped in the form of brown rice. Rice 
and other foods have always played a key role in the annual ritual cycle.

Ekiken Kaibara (1630-1714) was a student of Chinese literature and Oriental medicine, 
who also wrote about philosophy (primarily Confucian), ethics, education, and natural 
history. In his highly influential book Yojokun (Treatise on the Nourishment of Life), he 
described a regimen for maintaining good health by avoiding all types of self-indulgence. 
He encouraged people to "Eat less, sleep less, desire less," to avoid meat, and to practice a 
form of self-massage called do-in. Kaibara believed that every wise person's birthright was 
to delight in the simple but profound pleasures of heaven and earth, and a life span of 100 
years.

Nanboku Mizuno, who lived in the mid-1700s and early 1800s, was the father of Japanese 
physiognomy. After years of study and observation as an attendant in a Japanese public 
bath, a barber, and a worker in a crematorium, he wrote the great Japanese classic on 
physiognomy, the Nanboku Soho (Nanboku Method of Physiognomy), a ten-volume work 
published between 1788 and 1805. He felt that a person's character and past and future 
fortunes could be discerned by careful observation of physical characteristics, and that a 
person could change his inherited longevity through proper diet.

Dr. Sagen Ishizuka (1850-1910) grew up and was educated at a time when Western 
culture, including "scientific" medicine and nutrition, was being imported into Japan. (In 
1883, for example, the Japanese government prohibited the practice of traditional medical 
techniques such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, and moxabustion, and established 
Western medicine as the official mode of treatment.) Afflicted by a kidney infection, 
young Ishizuka had been unable to cure himself by Western medicine, so he turned to the 
study of Oriental medicine. This expanded into a lifelong interest in food and health, while 
he served as a physician in the military. In 1897 he published the results of his studies in a 
voluminous work entitled A Chemical-Nutritional Theory of Long Life. A popularized 
version of this difficult, technical work appeared in 1899 as A Nutritional Theory of the 
Mind and Body: A Nutritional Method for Health. The second book was extremely 
popular, and was reprinted 23 times.

Ishizuka's research led him to conclude that the balance of potassium (K) and sodium (Na) 
salts in the body was the prime determinant of health, that food is the main factor in 
maintaining this balance, and that food must therefore be the basis for curing disease and 
maintaining health. Food is the highest medicine. Man is by nature a granarian and his 
optimal diet should be based on cereal grains, which have a K/Na ratio of roughly 2.5. 
Ishizuka saw Westerners as sodium-dominant people (animal products are high in sodium) 
characterized by materialism, selfishness, individualism, and a drive for sensory 
gratification. Upon his retirement Ishizuka devoted himself to teaching and private 
practice. In 1908 he and his disciples founded the Shokuyo-kai (food-nourishment 
movement), which taught people of the problems with the new Western diet, rich in meat, 
sugar, and refined foods. They urged a return to the traditional Japanese diet based on 
whole grains, vegetables, and soyfoods. Ishizuka saw many patients daily and cured them 
with food. He was renowned for his success in healing people considered incurable by 

standard Western methods. Thus while most Japanese were being swept away by the great 
tide of Westernization, gradually abandoning their own culture and traditions (including 
their food and healing arts), Ishizuka and his associates viewed this trend critically; they 
attempted to borrow and synthesize only the good points, while preserving the endangered 
"national essence of Japan."

A disciple of Ishizuka's, Dr. Manabu Nishibata, developed the basic concept that food 
should be chosen according to the principle of Shin-do fu-ni, meaning "the body and earth 
are not two." Accordingly, people should care for their environment as they would their 
own body, for in fact the two are constantly flowing into one another. Likewise people 
should learn the joy of flowing with the great seasonal rhythms of the earth, choosing 
foods according to time and place, locally and in season, in harmony with the Order of the 
Universe.

The Life of George Ohsawa. George Ohsawa was born on 18 October 1893 in an eastern 
suburb of Kyoto, Japan. His name at birth was Joichi Sakurazawa. He had an unhappy 
childhood in a disenfranchised, broken samurai family. (The Meiji Restoration abolished 
the privileges of the samurai class.) His formal education stopped with a commercial high 
school, since he was too poor to continue. But he was an excellent student and he 
continued his education on his own with great drive throughout his life, reading 
voraciously in several languages on a remarkably wide range of vital subjects. While 
Ohsawa was still a boy his mother died of tuberculosis. Her first two children (daughters) 
had both died in their infancy. She had tried to introduce a Western style diet into her 
family's meals, hoping that it would make them healthier. In 1911 George's younger 
brother died of tuberculosis at age 16 and a short time later, at age 18, George himself was 
diagnosed as having tuberculosis; he was given little chance of survival. By good fortune 
he happened to find one of Ishizuka's books in a library. Ishizuka had died two years 
previously and Ohsawa had not met him. Ohsawa tried the recommended diet of brown 
rice and cooked vegetables, with small amounts of oil and salt; soon the tuberculosis 
disappeared. Ohsawa continued to practice this simple diet. After working for three years 
with a trading firm in Kobe, he joined the Shoku-yo group (which Ishizuka had founded) in 
1916. In 1923 Ohsawa gave up his business career and became a full-time staff employee 
with the group. Until 1929 he was general superintendent and head of publications. From 
1937-1939 he was president. In 1927 (Kotzsch Bibliog says 1929), at age 34, with Manabu 
Nishibata, he wrote his first book, The Physiology of the Japanese Spirit. Here he began to 
use the terms yin and yang, which even Ishizuka had used broadly to refer to sodium and 
potassium type foods. In 1928 Ohsawa wrote a eulogistic biography of Ishizuka. By that 
time he had been married and divorced either two or three times.

A new chapter in Ohsawa's life opened in 1929 when, at age 36, he set out for Paris to 
introduce the philosophy and practice of Shoku-yo (food and nourishment, which he later 
called "macrobiotics") to the Western world. In what was then the intellectual and cultural 
capital of the West, he aspired to be a cultural bridge. In 1931 his first book in French was 
published, Le Principe Unique de la Philosophie et de la Science d'Extreme Orient. It was 
well received and he began to move in cultured circles. After a brief return to Japan in 
1932 to oppose the growing militarism there, he went back to Paris and in 1934 wrote 
Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, the first book on this subject in English. His work 

influenced English and German acupuncture writers such as Lawson-Wood.

In 1936 he returned to Japan, where he stayed for 17 long and turbulent years. He actively 
opposed the ultra nationalism, militarism, and expansionism, while increasing his efforts 
as president of the Shoku-yo group. In 1939, however, he was asked to resign because of 
conflicts largely caused by his antigovernmental political activities, but also by his 
personality and philosophy. In 1937, at age 44, he married Lima, who was 38 and whose 
real?? first name was Sanae. She began to accompany him on many of his lecture tours 
teaching macrobiotic cooking. Since 1936 much of his time had been devoted to individual 
health and medical consultations and to writing. Now he decided to try to establish a new 
organization to convert Japan to shoku-yo, which he presented as the solution to all the 
country's problems. The struggle with the West, he maintained, should be ideological, not 
military, lest Japan be defeated. Once the war began, Ohsawa promoted shoku-yo as a 
means to achieve victory. By 1942 a war euphoria was sweeping Japan, but by 1943 things 
started to get bad. Together with his wife Lima and daughter Fumiko, plus a few intimate 
disciples, Ohsawa retreated to a remote mountain village in Yamanashi prefecture, called 
Hi no Maru (Haru??) His antiwar activities continued and in January 1945 he was 
imprisoned, questioned, and severely mistreated. He believed he would die, but finally, 
one month after the bomb fell on Hiroshima, he was released--gaunt, crippled, and 80% 
blind.

After the war, Ohsawa recovered slowly. He worked to make shoku-yo the guiding 
principle for the reconstruction of the nation. In 1947 he became involved with the World 
Federalist Movement, which was trying to seek world peace through world government. 
He tried to introduce his teachings on food into their program, and he began to call himself 
a "citizen of the world." From 1946-1952 he ran a school (which he called "Centre 
Ignoramus" or "World Government Association") in the town of Hiyoshi between Tokyo 
and Yokohama. There he began to gather and teach a small group of devoted disciples, 
who would later spread his teachings throughout the world. In 1949 he changed his name 
from Joichi Sakurazawa to George (or Georges) Ohsawa; George sounded like Joichi, the 
"s" on the end had to do with his love of France and French writers, and Ohsawa was 
written with the same characters as Sakurazawa, but pronounced differently. At the same 
time, he first began to call his philosophy and teachings "macrobiotics." The origin of this 
term is uncertain. Kotzsch (1981) feels that he probably borrowed it from the 19th century 
German philosopher and physician, Christolph Wilhelm von Hufeland. In 1860 von 
Hufeland had written a book about a method for achieving health and longevity, which he 
called Makrobiotik, Die Kunst des Menschliche Lebens zu Verlaengern ("Macrobiotics, the 
Art of Prolonging Human Life"). However Herman Aihara, a close student of Ohsawa, 
feels that Ohsawa did not know of von Hufeland's work or term, and that Ohsawa coined 
the term independently himself. At this time Ohsawa adopted the Western practice of 
having his students call him by his first name, George. He gave almost all of his students 
new, Westernized first names (such as Cornellia, Roland, Herman, etc.), taking these from 
great Western men and women born in the same month. The names were meant to show 
that the students were citizens of the world, not merely Japan. It was a personal choice 
whether to use the Westernized name or not; many chose not to. Ohsawa then began to 
dispatch his more accomplished prote'ge's, who were eager to spread the teachings to 
foreign lands. In 1949 Michio Kushi, a law student at Tokyo University, went to New York 
to study at Columbia University. Herman Aihara went to New York in 1952. Later others 

went to France, Brazil, Germany, and elsewhere.

In October 1953, a few days before his 60th birthday, George and Lima embarked on a 
new phase of their lives. He called it the "World Journey of the Penniless Samurai." 
Herman Aihara (1980) noted that like the salmon, Ohsawa decided to take his most 
adventurous trip late in his life. He hoped to spread macrobiotics around the world, making 
it a basic principle not only of personal and spiritual health but of world peace as well. The 
couple first spent 18 months in India teaching and studying macrobiotics. They then went 
to Africa for several months, where George had a deep spiritual awakening (at age 62) and 
later tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Dr. Albert Schweitzer of his philosophy and 
practice. Having healed himself of a reputedly incurable tropical disease using only 
macrobiotics, he and Lima then flew to Paris in early 1956. There the most important 
phase of his teaching and writing began. Most of the last decade of his life was spent in 
Western Europe and America, were he developed a small but dedicated following.

In 1959 Muso Shokuhin (originally called Osaka CI or "Centre Ignoramus"), a macrobiotic 
food company, was started in Osaka, Japan by Mr. Shuzo Okada. Although Ohsawa was 
not involved in founding the company, he was an active supporter and associate. Muso 
played an important role in introducing macrobiotic foods to both Japan and the West. 
They first began exporting soyfoods (miso and natural shoyu) in 1963, to Lima, a 
macrobiotic food company in Belgium (see below). Their soyfoods exports to the U.S. 
started in 1966, when barley miso was sent to Chico-san in California. Total exports, 
including exports of miso and shoyu, expanded greatly during the 1970s.

By the late 1950s Ohsawa's work in Europe was bearing a rich harvest. In 1959 3,000 
people attended a macrobiotic summer camp in France. That same year some dedicated 
Belgian followers, Pierre Gevaert and friends, started a macrobiotic food manufacturing 
and distribution company called Lima, which established and contracted with organic 
farmers and made quality macrobiotic foods available in Europe for the first time. In 1959 
Lima started to make natural shoyu (aged for at least 3 years) and barley miso, and soon 
began importing fine natural foods, including miso and shoyu, from Japan. In about 1958 a 
German businessman who had heard Ohsawa lecture on natural shoyu had quickly and 
cleverly registered the word "shoyu" as his own trademark, so the macrobiotic movement 
was forced to find an alternative term. Out of sheer necessity, and realizing it was slightly 
inaccurate, they decided to call their natural shoyu by the name "tamari" (Lima Ohsawa 
1983). At least this distinguished it from its chemically made counterparts (see Chapter 
36). For the first time in European history, non-Oriental Europeans began to make miso 
and shoyu a part of their daily diet. Later Lima exported macrobiotic foods to the U.S.A. 
In 1961 Ohsawa's book Le Zen Macrobiotique appeared in France. It contained many 
recipes, both medicinal and culinary, using miso and shoyu, and it also discussed tofu. In 
early 1961, when Herman Aihara visited Europe, he reported that there were many 
beautiful macrobiotic restaurants and clinics in France (the restaurants were Au Riz Dore 
and Longue Vie), Belgium, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In about 1962 Ohsawa 
learned of Louis Kervran's unpublished work on "biological transmutation" and developed 
an all-consuming interest in it. Two years later he claimed to have changed sodium into 
potassium at low temperatures, accomplishing what only alchemists had formerly said they 
could do, changing one element into another. These developments attracted little attention 
(Why??). In 1964 his last European book was published: Le Cancer et la Philosophie 

d'Extreme Orient. That year France boasted a French macrobiotic monthly magazine, 
Yin/Yang, two restaurants, a tiny macrobiotic food store and Ohsawa Foundation with 
library on Rue Lamartine in Paris and another Japanese teacher, Clim Yoshimi.

As noted above, starting in 1949 and continuing throughout the 1950s, a small number of 
Ohsawa's Japanese students began to arrive in the United States and to settle in New York 
City. Apparently they taught but little about macrobiotics in those early days; most were 
busy supporting themselves and learning English. Michio Kushi was the first to arrive, in 
1949, in connection with the World Federalist Movement. After studying international law 
at Columbia University, he managed a department store and did odd jobs to support 
himself. Michio wrote letters back to Japan, Ohsawa read them to his students, and Aveline 
Tomoko Yokoyama fell in love with them. In 1951, after 18 months at Ohsawa's school, 
she won a trip to America by being the best seller of Ohsawa's newspapers. She met 
Michio in New York City and they were married there in 1953. Herman Aihara arrived in 
San Francisco in early 1952 at age 32 and went directly to New York City. As early as 
March 1952 he was selling macrobiotic foods in New York; he imported them from 
Ohsawa in Japan. Soon he was joined by Cornellia Yokota, with whom he had been 
corresponding in Japan. They were married in New York in 1955. In the late 1950s the first 
macrobiotic restaurant in the U.S. was started in New York City by Alcan Yamaguchi, with 
carpentry help from Herman Aihara. Called Zen Teahouse, it was located at 317 Second 
Ave. and consisted of a small (four-table) main room containing a kitchen. The only 
soyfoods served here were miso and shoyu (natural soy sauce): as a regular food, tofu was 
considered too yin for most people and not so good for those with health problems. This 
restaurant was later renamed Paradox.

When Ohsawa first arrived in America in December 1959, very few Americans had heard 
of macrobiotics. (Actually this was probably not Ohsawa's first trip to the U.S.; he is 
thought to have made a short business trip there in the 1920s.) During his visit in New 
York, Ohsawa stayed at the Aihara's apartment, since Herman was his closest associate in 
America. (Michio Kushi had had few meetings with Ohsawa in Japan and had never 
resided at his Centre Ignoramus.) After one week, Ohsawa flew alone to California to find 
a source of short-grain brown rice; he had not been able to find any in New York. He 
located Koda Brothers' brown rice in California, stayed there a week, then returned to the 
Aihara's apartment. First things first. All were impressed at how quickly he had solved a 
major problem. Then, to introduce macrobiotics, Ohsawa presented three series of lectures, 
each for ten nights during January, February, and March of 1960 at the Buddhist Academy 
in New York City. During these lectures his first work in English was published, a 
mimeographed edition of Zen Macrobiotics. He and the Aiharas duplicated and bound 
these in the Aihara`s apartment, then sold them at the lectures for $0.50 each. In this 
publication he introduced miso and natural shoyu (which he called "tamari"); he did not 
emphasize the use of tofu as a regular food, just as an occasional pleasure item. Miso and 
natural shoyu quickly became essential ingredients in the diet of most students of 
macrobiotics in the U.S. At about this time (1960-61) Ohsawa's second work, the Book of 
Judgment, appeared in English, having been printed in Japan. The book was originally 
written in French.

After returning to Europe, Ohsawa came back to the U.S. in July 1960 and lectured daily 
for two months at the first American macrobiotic summer camp at Southampton, Long 

Island; ??,00 people attended. Ohsawa found his most enthusiastic response from writers, 
actors, artists, musicians, and other established members of the artistic and intellectual 
communities, with some interest from the bohemian counterculture in Greenwich Village. 
Soon a small but devoted following had developed; many of these people had experienced 
a cure through the macrobiotic diet.

To serve this growing interest, new institutions were established. In 1960 a tiny restaurant 
named Musubi was started in Greenwich Village and run by Alcan Yamaguchi, Romain 
Noboru Sato, Junsei Yamazaki, Herman Aihara, and Michio Kushi. In late 1961 Musubi 
was moved to 55th Street and frequented by many famous Broadway actors, who were 
first introduced to miso and shoyu. The first macrobiotic food store (combined with a gift 
shop), called Ginza, was started by Herman Aihara, in 1960. Both Musubi and Ginza 
served or sold miso and shoyu which Ohsawa had sent from Japan. In January 1961 the 
Ohsawa Foundation of New York was established on 2nd Avenue by Irma Paule, Michio 
Kushi, and friends. Michio and Herman Aihara were the first two presidents. In late 1960 
Herman started publishing Macrobiotic News, a magazine consisting mainly of Ohsawa's 
lectures.

In 1961 Ohsawa came to America again for the second macrobiotic summer camp, this 
time in the Catskill Mountains at Wurtsboro, New York. Miso and shoyu were used in 
cooking classes. After the camp, at the time of the Berlin Wall crisis (August 1961, before 
the Cuban missile crisis in Oct. 1962), Ohsawa feared that a nuclear war might be near. He 
urged his followers to leave New York and find a place that was safer from radioactive 
fallout and good for growing rice. After extensive research, they chose Chico, California, 
in the fairly rural, sheltered, and healthful Sacramento Valley, the heart of California rice 
growing country. Thirty two people (11 families) packed all their belongings and made the 
exodus to Chico in a caravan of vans, buses, and station wagons. They arrived on 1 
October 1961. (Shortly thereafter a Strategic Air Command base was built nearby!) 
Among the active people in the group were Bob Kennedy, Herman Aihara, and Dick 
Smith. Talents were diverse, but rare in the fields of food manufacturing and distribution: 
five professional trumpet players, a painter, a woodcarver, a Harvard economist, a TV soap 
opera star, a social worker, and an engineer.

On 6 March 1962 the group founded a new food company named Chico-San as a retail 
store plus an import, wholesale, and distribution company. It was capitalized with $10,000. 
In addition to a line of whole-grain products, they soon began to import a variety of 
macrobiotic foods from Ohsawa Japan/Tokyo CI?? Among the foods were umeboshi salt 
plums, sea vegetables, and Marushin miso and shoyu. Ohsawa arranged for the 
manufacture of these products and examined them carefully. The first store and food plant 
(they made sesame salt or gomashio and repackaged foods) was in the basement of a small 
hearing aid shop in Chico. It became the first macrobiotic food production and distribution 
company in the U.S. Unfortunately, however, these traditional whole-grain staples and 
Japanese foods were not what most Americans had in mind when they thought of "health 
foods." As Kennedy wrote in 1972:

Back in the late fifties and sixties people who were interested in food and health were 
called "food faddists" or "health food nuts." The food products found in most health food 
stores at this time consisted of a vast array of vitamin and mineral supplements, super 

protein concentrates, natural cosmetics, and a scattering of whole grains, few of which 
were organically grown.

Adelle Davis, America's most popular health mentor, was teaching that the way to better 
health lay in consuming more vitamin and mineral supplements. To introduce their new 
concept, Aihara and Kennedy began an educational program in the mid-1960s, traveling a 
lecture circuit up and down the West Coast. In 19?? a small bakery making whole-grain 
breads from freshly-ground flour was established in the back of the Chico-San retail store. 
Things went very slowly until Ohsawa visited Chico in the summer of 1963 for a series of 
lectures. He suggested that the group try making rice cakes--a 4-inch diameter, 1/2-inch-
thick sort of cracker made of puffed brown rice. Ohsawa sent them a rice cake machine 
from Japan and production began in the fall of 1963. Rice cakes soon became Chico-San's 
first really popular and successful product, and they remain so to this day (Jacobs 1982).

Many students of macrobiotics and some teachers stayed in New York to keep up the 
Ohsawa Foundation, the restaurants, and the food store. In early 1963 Aveline Kushi 
moved to Martha's Vineyard for 6 months for a more natural environment; Michio 
continued working in New York. Then in September 1963 the whole Kushi family moved 
to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Michio stopped all his outside business activities and 
directed his full efforts toward teaching macrobiotics. Irma Paule kept things alive in New 
York, her "territory." By 1965 Michio and Aveline were very active with lectures, cooking 
classes, providing a supply of macrobiotic foods to students, and the like. Erewhon opened 
as a small food store in April 1966 and a small macrobiotic restaurant was opened in 
February 1967. Before long, Boston was coming to be known as the macrobiotic Mecca of 
America.

From the early 1960s on, Ohsawa visited America frequently. In 1962 at Christmas he 
visited Chico and lectured on macrobiotics. In 1963 he lectured in Boston, New York City, 
and at the Chico summer camp. In 1964 he was in California at the Big Sur Summer 
Camp, and in 1965 he lectured at Mayoro Lodge near Pulga, California. Note the 
concentration of his efforts in California. He was ceaselessly active on these visits, talking 
with groups and individuals, a fountain of positive energy and charisma. In 1963 the first 
edition of Zen Cookery, a book of macrobiotic recipes, was published by the Ohsawa 
Foundation in Los Angeles; a new edition was compiled by the Chico group in 1966. Both 
contained many recipes for miso and natural shoyu ("tamari"), but made no mention of 
tofu, soybeans, or other soyfoods. In 1965 the second edition of Ohsawa's Zen 
Macrobiotics (first published in mimeographed format in 1960) was prepared and 
published by Lou Oles of the Ohsawa Foundation in Los Angeles. It contained much more 
information about soyfoods including Ohsawa Tamari (defined as "macrobiotic soy sauce 
produced by the traditional, biological, sugarless method," to be used both in cookery and 
in medicinal drinks), miso, tekka miso, miso cream, miso-ae, miso-ni, muso (miso mixed 
with sesame butter), tofu, and yuba. Thereafter these soyfoods appeared in virtually all 
Western macrobiotic cookbooks and cooking classes. During the following years these two 
books became a prime vehicle for introducing both macrobiotics and soyfoods to people 
throughout America. Another book which furthered the spread of macrobiotics was You 
Are All Sanpaku by William Dufty, published in 1965. Then in 1966 a revised edition of 
Ohsawa's Book of Judgment was published, the result of editing work by Lou Oles and the 

Chico Group.

By 1965 the macrobiotic movement in America, though small, was growing rapidly. 
Various estimates indicate somewhere between 300 and 2,000 people actively involved. 
Ohsawa, whose numerous books were now available, described this as the happiest period 
of his life. He was able to watch his efforts bearing fruit in the form of very active yet 
independent groups in Boston, Chico, and New York. Though the style of each group was 
different, Ohsawa supported and encouraged all. A number of students moved between the 
groups to further their studies.

In late 1965, however, macrobiotics experienced its first major setback. Beth Ann Simon, a 
young heroin addict from New Jersey, had decided, without supervision, to switch 
suddenly to the strictest form of the macrobiotic cleansing diet, regimen number 7, 
consisting of only brown rice and other grains. She resumed her use of heroin, refused to 
broaden her diet, lost a lot of weight, then died on 9 Nov. 1965 in Clifton, New Jersey. 
Simon's father, an influential lawyer, tried to cover up his daughter's use of heroin and 
blame the "alien influence" of macrobiotics instead. According to Kotzsch (1981), when 
Ohsawa returned to America he was tried for medical malpractice. Although he was 
ultimately acquitted, he and the diet received much adverse publicity. The U.S. Food and 
Drug Administration (FDA) closed the New York branch of the Ohsawa Foundation and 
inspected the Chico store. They enforced the ruling stating that it was illegal to sell food 
products and information about those products under the same company name. This led to 
a separation of the Chico-San food company and the Ohsawa Foundation in Chico. More 
important, the Simon incident branded macrobiotics among many in the medical and 
health professions as a dangerous and extreme form of health food faddism. This image 
was hard to get rid of.

For a period of more than 40 years, Ohsawa developed the philosophy and daily practice 
which he called "macrobiotics" or the "Unique Principle." It was based on a new 
formulation of the laws of change and balance according to the ancient Chinese unifying 
principle of yin-yang, which saw the paradoxical and dialectical unity of opposites. More 
specifically, it emphasized the application of yin-yang to food, health, and medicine, 
Ohsawa's three main areas of interest. In short, he saw macrobiotics as the practical 
biological and physiological application of the basic principle of Oriental philosophy. 
While his teaching started with and returned to food as a prime determinant of one's 
health, consciousness, and happiness, its ultimate aim was to help people acquire "eternal 
happiness, infinite freedom, and absolute justice," through an understanding of what he, 
like the Chinese sages, considered to be universal laws. For Ohsawa macrobiotics was 
emphatically not "a diet" but rather an approach to diet, a comprehensive philosophy of the 
principles of diet. Like a yoga posture, the food was but a vehicle, yet it was a sacred 
vehicle, as eating was a sacred act and ritual. Through macrobiotics Ohsawa linked diet 
wholistically with philosophy, spiritual practice, health, and medicine. He did much to 
promote a new meeting and synthesis of East and West in all of the above areas. He was 
one of the first to praise the traditional, even the primitive, over the modern and "civilized" 
(see his Jack and Mitie, Ref??). He felt he had rediscovered a timeless way of life and the 
relevance of many ancient spiritual and dietary traditions.

Concerning food and diet, Ohsawa's main message was that the best diet was a traditional 

one, based on whole grains, the most abundant of all foods. The diet should be simple, 
using local natural foods (or at least foods from the same climate) in season, with little or 
no animal products, no sugar, and little spice. Like his teacher, Ishizuka, he believed that 
meat and animal foods create a more aggressive personality and way of thinking, whereas 
a grain-based, primarily vegetarian diet creates a more peaceful personality and spiritual 
consciousness. The use of milk or dairy products was seen as going against the natural 
order; they were meant for young calves, not adult (weaned) humans. The traditional 
combination of grains and beans (especially fermented soyfoods and azuki, the small red 
beans) was recommended as a protein source. Tomatoes, eggplants, and potatoes, all 
members of the Solanacae or nightshade family were not generally recommended. They 
were thought to be very yin, and traditionally to have been considered poisonous. Like the 
Japanese diet with its small consumption of animal products, the macrobiotic diet was 
typically low in fat and very low in cholesterol and saturated fats.

Ohsawa ranked all foods on a scale from yin to yang. The scale was a dynamic, ever-
changing one. (Later Aihara modified this by incorporating acid and alkaline into the yin-
yang classification.) Many factors determined a food's position on the scale, but a key one 
was the ratio of potassium to sodium. Potassium was yin and sodium yang. Balanced foods 
such as brown rice and most grains had a K:Na ratio of roughly 5:1. Yin foods had a higher 
ratio and yang foods a lower one. Salt and meat, for example, were considered very yang, 
while "street" drugs (including LSD and marijuana), alcohol, and white sugar were very 
yin. In general a very yin diet was seen as the cause of most illnesses, which could be 
cured by making the diet more yang. A "balanced" diet for Ohsawa was not so much one 
containing the Western Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for all basic nutrients, but 
one in which yin and yang were balanced, and balancing with extremes (meat and sugar) 
was minimized. Thus Ohsawa was one of the first health teachers in America to argue 
convincingly that white sugar was bad for body and mind. His basic analysis of the 
American dietary pattern was that it had forgotten the central role of grains in the diet and 
had come to be dominated by meat and sugar, two foods that he considered extreme and 
unhealthy. He also pointed out the importance of eating and drinking lightly, in contrast to 
the self indulgent and undisciplined eating patterns he observed in so many Americans. 
Repeatedly he stressed that the benefits of an otherwise good diet are easily thrown away 
by overeating.

Ohsawa was highly critical of Western medicine. He felt that most illness is a valuable 
warning from the body indicating that a person is violating the laws of health and going 
against the Order of the Universe, especially in eating and drinking. To treat such illness 
symptomatically, trying to get rid of the superficial symptoms rather than correcting the 
basic cause of the problem, means forestalling and actually aggravating inevitable disaster. 
Ohsawa felt that Western medicine was merely and primarily symptomatic medicine, 
which had little interest in understanding the deeper causes of disease or in teaching people 
how to prevent disease and to heal themselves. He felt that Western medical specialists, 
caught in a maze of details based on fragmented analysis, were unable to view or treat the 
whole person, holistically. He found it especially difficult to understand why medical 
professionals refused to accept what all traditional Oriental healers recognized as obvious; 
the deep connection between proper diet and good health. He wondered why the education 
of Western doctors involved so little study of food and nutrition, why they rarely enquired 
as to what their patients eat and drink, and why they even tried to block the dietary and 

lifestyle approach to good health and healing. He noted that there was no basic theory or 
philosophy behind Western medicine and nutrition, linking them together and to a larger 
view of the cosmos; they were purely experimental-empirical, derived from scientific 
reason and analysis to the exclusion of intuition and direct personal experience. Thus, for 
example, Western nutritionists concluded that white sugar and brown rice were both 
basically the same: carbohydrates. Yet anyone eating only brown rice or only white sugar 
for several days would immediately recognize that each had a dramatically different effect 
on the body/mind.

Ohsawa saw the West as a civilization in crisis, beset with moral, spiritual, ideological, and 
health problems. Disease, crime, pollution, and divorce were all rapidly increasing. The 
goal of Western economics and technology was, he felt, the maximization of material 
wealth, sensual pleasure, comfort, and convenience through plundering of the earth, 
nature, and other nations. Western man tried hopelessly to find happiness by producing and 
consuming as much as possible.

The place to start in unraveling this maze of problems, Ohsawa felt, was with the 
individual human organism. Fundamental change must be biologically and biochemically 
based, and that could most easily be brought about by a change to a traditional 
(macrobiotic) diet. Some expressed his position as one of alimentary determinism: "You 
are what you eat." To many young people of the counterculture in the 1960s, Ohsawa's 
penetrating critique of Western civilization rang clear and true. This attracted them to his 
teachings on diet, based on a more simple and spiritual life. And because soyfoods were a 
basic part of his diet, they came to be considered by his students as a key ingredient in a 
new and more healthful way of life.

On 23 April 1966, just as his teaching was beginning to spread rapidly in the West, 
Ohsawa died unexpectedly in Tokyo at age 72. The immediate cause of death was given as 
cardiac failure, probably compounded by the filarial parasites he had contracted a decade 
earlier at Lambarene', Gabon, in Africa.

To his followers, Ohsawa was a great man, author of over 100 books (some say 120, or 4 a 
year during his writing years) and publisher of many magazines, a ground-breaking thinker 
who formulated the major issues of his time and worked tirelessly to create a better world. 
He was the universal Oriental sage, dedicated to the welfare of others, full of the joy of life 
and of its giving, content with the simplest things, and always with a sense of amusement 
and good humor. His powerful, vibrant voice and charismatic personality were captivating. 
He was the perfect manifestation of his teachings on how a free man should be. His 
biographer Kotzsch has noted:

Probably the most powerful element in Ohsawa's thought was his basic optimism about 
the world, human nature and the possibility of human happiness in the world . . . Ohsawa's 
vision of the universe as orderly and harmonious and of human life as joyful and free is a 
stunning rebuttal to the pessimism and fatalism permeating the Western modern view.

But to his critics Ohsawa was a crackpot, a self-styled doctor with no formal training, an 
extremist, sloppy intellectually and in his writings, unscientific, oversimplistic in his 
analysis of complex problems ("No illness is more simple to cure than cancer."), and 

overconfident that a change of diet could solve such complex problems. Ohsawa was full 
of contradictions, of which the following are but a few examples. First, though a teacher of 
healthful living, he was a heavy smoker, having started at about age 50. Because he did it 
with style, and not to relieve stress, he gave many of his students the desire to smoke too. 
Second, he had a weakness for whiskey. Third, while encouraging consumption of locally 
grown foods, he imported large amounts of food from Japan and brown rice was eaten at 
most macrobiotic centers, even if it was not grown nearby. (It was argued that Japan had 
roughly the same climate as America and many of the foods were not available in the U.S.) 
Fourth, Ohsawa showed an ongoing, keen interest, perhaps unconsciously, in getting 
Westerners to act and live as if they were traditional Japanese, eating imported Japanese 
foods with chopsticks while sitting on the floor. No doubt Ohsawa, with his galaxy-sized 
sense of humor, would have laughed heartily at all his paradoxes and imperfections. 
Regardless and despite the only modest success during his lifetime of his work in Japan, it 
would be difficult to overestimate the impact he had on shaping the alternative food 
consciousness that emerged in the West in the 1960s and 1970s--and with it the soyfoods 
movement discussed in the next chapter. His work was ably carried on by his wife Lima, 
who at age 86 in 1985 was remarkably fit and active, and by his students.

Part 2

George Ohsawa, The Macrobiotic Movement 
Part 2

A Special Exhibit - The History of Soy Pioneers Around the World - Unpublished 
Manuscript 

by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi

©Copyright 2004 Soyinfo Center, Lafayette, California

Development of Macrobiotics in Boston. Michio and Aveline Kushi arrived in Boston in 
September 1963 to introduce macrobiotics to that area. Boston, with its many top 
universities and its long tradition as a cradle for incipient spiritual and ideological 
movements (such as Transcendentalism and Buddhism in the 1800s) was always a good 
place to introduce a new teaching and way of life. Moreover, there was now a new and 
growing group of young people, quite different from the professionals and artists 
originally attracted to macrobiotics in New York, many of whom had experienced states of 
heightened sensitivity or altered consciousness through use of psychedelic drugs and the 
various techniques developed by the human potential movement. They were looking to 
ground and integrate these experiences into their everyday lives through changes of 
lifestyle and diet, and to understand these experiences through spiritual teachings and 
philosophies. Many who studied East Asian spiritual traditions and philosophies found that 
they often were connected with a vegetarian dietary practice. These people showed great 
interest in macrobiotics. 

In 1965 Michio organized the first East West Institute on Walden Street in Cambridge and 
began teaching cosmology and cooking to mostly young people. Study houses were started 
and in mid-1966 Michio began a series of lectures at the Arlington Street Church in 

Boston; these continued until 1971. The groups were small (only 10-20 people by 1967) 
but the spirit and camaraderie were strong.

In Cambridge Michio and Aveline lived in a large house, which also served as the first East 
West Institute and macrobiotic study house. Some 10-12 students also lived in the house. 
One of the first problems was to find healthful, natural foods at reasonable prices to feed 
this large group. An informal buying club was established and soon people were making 
trips to Pennsylvania to buy bulk natural foods from Walnut Acres and the Mennonites 
(wheat, flour, and oatmeal), and to New York to buy from Howard Rower's Infinity Foods 
(miso and shoyu), from Japan Foods Corp. (Hatcho miso and other Japanese staples), and 
from Wing Wing's (a local Chinese grocery). Before long people outside the study house, 
mainly new students of macrobiotics, asked if they could join the food buying club. Thus 
in 1965 a small, informal buying club, starting with $500 cash, was set up in the basement 
of the Kushi house. The bulk foods were divided into small bags, priced, and sold at little 
or no profit. The operation was seen as a service, not a business. But natural foods were 
hard to find in those days, so demand grew rapidly and by early 1966 the informal store 
had outgrown its basement quarters.

In April 1966 Michio and Aveline Kushi started Erewhon, when the basement buying club 
was moved into a tiny (10-by-20-foot) retail store downstairs at 303-B Newbury Street in 
Boston. The same foods were sold in the same, informal way, with some new products 
now starting to be purchased from Chico-San and imported from Lima in Belgium. (Where 
get miso??) The store was also used for Michio's lectures. Evan Root, a student of the 
Kushis', helped them to open the store and he managed it until October 1967, when Paul 
Hawken took over. During this initial period the store was mainly a cracker barrel style 
operation, with about 200 customers and sales of $20-$30 a day. People came to talk 
philosophy and swap recipes, whether or not they bought anything. No tofu was sold since 
there was no refrigeration, but top quality, naturally fermented miso and shoyu (typically 
fermented for several years to make it rich, thick, and mellow), were very popular.

In February 1968 Evan Root, the first manager of Erewhon, opened Boston's first 
macrobiotic restaurant. Called Sanae (after Lima Ohsawa's original first name), it was a 
small place that served, among other things, miso, shoyu, black soybeans, and occasionally 
tofu. In 1971 Sanae opened another larger branch, which was renamed The Seventh Inn in 
1972.

Starting in 1965 and increasingly during the following year Michio began to travel in 
America, teaching about macrobiotics. In May 1968 William Shurtleff hosted a one-week 
series of Kushi lectures, workshops, and cooking classes at Stanford University. This was 
Kushi's first trip to the West Coast. Like Ohsawa and other macrobiotic teachers, Kushi 
gave of himself selflessly, tirelessly, endlessly. His teaching was well received and eagerly 
studied.

In October 1967 Paul Hawken took over the management of Erewhon. He later recalled 
his first visit to the tiny downstairs store, where Evan Root was selling bulk shoyu: "On his 
left sat a half empty tamari (shoyu) keg with a piece of surgical tubing hanging out. 
Around him on pine board shelves were lumpy donut bags filled with flours and grains." 
As Hawken wrote later (East West Journal, Aug. 1973) in "Erewhon, a Biography," the 

story of the company's colorful and turbulent years, he hoped to expand Erewhon from a 
small corner store with a trickle of customers, a very limited selection of unusual foods, 
and a small mail-order business, into a company that would "attempt to provide the 
renewing and cleansing power of the earth." Part of this original vision of Erewhon was 
that people would learn to make their own miso and shoyu. Hawken expanded the name to 
Erewhon Trading Company and in May 1968 incorporated the business, with he (now 
president) and Aveline each owning 50% of the stock. During the next year sales rose from 
$1,000 to $9,000 a month and many of the new customers came from outside the 
macrobiotic community; they wanted whole, natural foods. A small mail-order business 
was started. Erewhon joined Fred Rohe's Sunset Natural Foods (since 1965 on 9th St. in 
San Francisco) as America's earliest natural food retail stores. Unlike the then-popular 
health food stores, no vitamin pills or food supplements were sold.

In early 1968 a customer came into Erewhon and asked: "How do you know the grains are 
organically grown? How do you know the oil is really cold pressed?" Since no one could 
answer, Hawken began to make enquiries and found out that many foods were not what 
they claimed to be. So he set to work developing reliable sources, going to farmers 
directly, specifying the conditions for organic growing, then guaranteeing to buy the crop. 
In mid-1968 the first supplier was established, a wheat farmer in North Dakota. Hawken 
then found a source of soybeans, an insurance salesman named Frank Ford who, one day a 
week, worked selling organically grown soybeans and wheat out of a boxcar in Deaf Smith 
County, Texas. This work was greatly expanded in the following years as the demand for 
organically grown foods increased and the problems with chemical pesticides, herbicides, 
and fertilizers came to be more widely recognized. By 1973 Erewhon had established and 
contracted with 57 farms in 35 states to provide the company directly with organically 
grown foods, including a lot of produce. Chico-San had also established a grower of 
organic rice in California in late 1968, as described later. Thus macrobiotic companies 
played a pioneering role in helping U.S. companies to start growing foods by organic 
methods.

In August 1968 Erewhon started to import foods from Japan by correspondence with Mr. 
Akiyoshi Kazama, introduced by Mr. Kobayashi, a friend of the Kushis'. Kazama then 
worked for an import/export company called Mitoku, which sold no food at that time. The 
initial orders contained red miso (made by one of Ohsawa's cronies) and natural shoyu 
made by Marushima.

In November 1968, on Thanksgiving day, Erewhon moved up and across the street to a 
much bigger and nicer location at 342 Newbury St. The front of the store was for retail 
sales and the back was a stock room and wholesale outlet. Daily sales at the start averaged 
about $250 a day and there were six employees: Roger Hillyard, Bruce McDonald, Bill 
Tara, Jim Docker, Jean Allison, plus Hawken. Tofu, curded with calcium sulfate and made 
by a Chinese company in Boston, started to be sold. Tofu curded with nigari was not 
introduced until after 1973. In March 1969 Hawken left for nine months in Japan to 
establish import contacts and manufacturing sources there. Hillyard took over as general 
manager. One year after moving into the new location, Erewhon was doing $35,000 to 
$40,000 a month in retail and wholesale sales.

During his 1969 trip to Japan, Hawken set up two key import supply companies, Mitoku 

and Muso Shokuhin (then called Osaka CI, or "Centre Ignoramus"). Traveling with the 
heads of these companies he visited many food factories, and thus was the first person in 
the U.S. natural foods and macrobiotic movements to study the traditional processes for 
making miso and shoyu in Japan. After this trip Erewhon's Japanese imports were greatly 
expanded, with Hatcho miso and Marushima shoyu being imported directly from the 
manufacturers. Returning to the U.S. Hawken worked with Bruce McDonald 
(Macdonald?) to open a branch of Erewhon in Los Angeles (when?? Named Erewhon 
West from the outset??), worked with Fred Rohe to start a trade association called Organic 
Merchants (when??), and began writing pamphlets on natural foods: The Sugar Story, The 
Oil Story, etc.

The natural foods boom hit America in 1970 and swept Erewhon along with it. A 
wholesale-retail catalog for Erewhon Trading Co. Inc. dated January 1970, showed the 
company to be importing and distributing a variety of soyfoods, including black soybeans, 
natural shoyu (aged 18 months), barley miso, Hatcho miso, moromi (used in making 
shoyu), sesame miso, and tekka miso, plus two new cookbooklets, Cooking Good Food by 
Jim Ledbetter and Cooking with Grains and Vegetables by Rebecca Dubawsky. A July 
catalog added yellow soybeans and rice miso. In July 1970 the rapidly expanding 
distribution business, having outgrown its retail store, was moved into a large (20,000 
square foot) fifth-floor leased brick warehouse at 33 Farnsworth St. (in Boston?). The mail 
order business was dropped and many new distribution accounts opened. Hawken returned 
to Erewhon in Boston in the summer of 1970; he described the company and the Boston 
scene then in his 1973 biography of Erewhon. To expand the vision of Erewhon and keep 
up with skyrocketing demand, the company began heavy borrowing. Large debts were 
incurred and, in 1972, some losses, including big losses by Erewhon in Los Angeles. There 
were major cash flow problems. In 1972 Hawken reported that running Erewhon was a 
nightmare. In mid-1973 he resigned and sold his 25% ownership back to the company, 
which was subsequently managed by Bill Garrison, Tyler Smith, Jeff Flasher, and Tom 
Williams, in that sequence. By 1973 Erewhon was probably the largest and most 
diversified distributor of natural and organically grown food in the U.S. The company had 
five truck routes in New England, a net worth of $1 million (Aveline Kushi now owned all 
of the shares), Boston wholesale sales of $250,000 a month and a staff of 50. The Boston 
warehouse was distributing to 342 accounts with 200,000 customers. The Erewhon Boston 
retail store had 10,000 customers. The Los Angeles warehouse distributed to 183 accounts 
and 75,000 customers and its retail store had 5,000 customers. Miso and shoyu were being 
imported from Mitoku and Muso Shokuhin. Mechanically expressed soy oil was brought 
in from California and organically grown soybeans from Carl Garrich in Lone Pine, 
Arkansas (who also supplied organic brown rice).

By the late 1960s the strong interest in natural foods and macrobiotics developing across 
America, springing out of the new consciousness and counterculture, gave rise to a a host 
of small natural food retail stores, macrobiotic and otherwise. These popped up like 
mushrooms in towns and cities. A number of the earlier successful stores grew into 
distributors following the models established by and with help from Erewhon and Chico-
San. Erewhon set up distributors in Los Angeles (Erewhon West) and Toronto, Canada 
(later Manna). Other macrobiotic food distribution companies followed suit: Eden Organic 
Foods in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Nov. 1969, as a retail store), Food for Life (which was 
started in 1970 by Bill Tara as a retail store on the 10th floor of a Chicago office building), 

Janus in Seattle (1971, by Gearhart and Rankin, formerly of Spiral Foods [Spiral not 
mentioned above??]), Essene in Philadelphia (When, by Whom??), Laurelbrook in 
Maryland (When, by Whom??), Ceres in Colorado Springs (1973), and The Well in San 
Jose (1973, by Roger Hillyard). These macrobiotic distributors had a strong influence on 
the numerous other non-macrobiotic natural food distributors, such as Lifestream (started 
in 1969 as a retail store), Westbrae in Berkeley, California (1970, by Bob Gerner), 
Shadowfax (1971, where?), and Tree of Life (1972, where?). These were all pioneers.

In December 1973 Hawken, having left Erewhon, arranged a meeting in Toronto attended 
by representatives of eight macrobiotic distributing companies to discuss cooperation in 
the industry, an industry newsletter, and the possibilities of establishing a trade association 
of natural food distributors.

Erewhon was the largest company at the meeting. As the exclusive representative for both 
Muso and Mitoku in the U.S., they had tight control over Japanese imports. The group 
held four more meetings prior to late 1975 and attendance at meetings grew to 14 
companies, including most of the major natural food distributors at the time except Chico-
San . At the Boston meeting in May 1975 Michio Kushi offered to help any company send 
representatives to Japan to study traditional production of miso and shoyu. The Natural 
Foods Distributors Association had 13 members by June 1975, but unfortunately it never 
got off the ground. There was no strong leader to carry through on the project, the 
companies were unwilling to provide the funding to pay a director, and there were no 
clearly agreed-on goals and projects. Nevertheless by 1977 ten macrobiotic food 
distributors were servicing nearly 10,000 retailers and 300 restaurants in North America. 
All carried a line of soyfoods similar to that of Erewhon.

No publication in the macrobiotic movement played a greater role in introducing soyfoods 
to North America than the East West Journal, which commenced publication in January 
1971 as a small-circulation biweekly. Its stated purpose was "to explore the unity 
underlying apparently opposite values: Oriental and Occidental, traditional and modern, 
visionary and practical." It published many of the earliest and the best articles about 
traditional Japanese soyfoods, including a cover story on miso and "Recipes from The 
Book of Miso" (Aveline Kushi 1971), "Making Miso in America" (B.W. 1971, a visit to 
the Norio Miso Co. in San Francisco), "Making Tofu" (Wood 1972), and "Erewhon Visits 
a Soy Sauce Factory " (1973, about Marushima Shoyu in Japan). From October 1975 until 
December 1981 the Journal ran 11 major articles on soyfoods (plus scattered soyfoods 
recipes). By 1982 it was a handsome nationwide monthly magazine with a circulation of 
over 70,000 (20-25% of whom called themselves macrobiotics) and a readership of 4 to 5 
times that many. Other periodicals, with a much smaller circulation limited mostly to 
macrobiotic readers include Order of the Universe, Macrobiotic Messenger, Macrobiotic 
Review, Macroscope, GOMF News, and Macromuse.

In 1972 a small publishing company called Autumn Press was founded in Tokyo, Japan by 
Nahum Stiskin, a student of macrobiotics from Boston. In 1974 he translated and 
published Lima Ohsawa's The Art of Just Cooking, containing over 25 Japanese soyfoods 
recipes. The book was quite popular in America. In 1975 Autumn Press published Shurtleff 
and Aoyagi"s The Book of Tofu, and in 1976 their Book of Miso. In 1978 Japan 
Publications issued Aveline Kushi's long awaited How to Cook with Miso. These books 

could never have been published without the macrobiotic interest in and market for 
soyfoods.

The Boston macrobiotic community began to expand its activities by setting up a variety 
of educational institutions. The East West Foundation, established in Boston in 1972, has 
held hundreds of seminars on macrobiotics in which tens of thousands of people have 
participated. Since 1974 the highlight of these activities has been the Amherst Summer 
Program, attended by 300-400 people each year to study all aspects of macrobiotics. 
Starting in 1976 East West Centers began to open in major cities throughout North 
America. There, too, all aspects of macrobiotics are taught. In the fall of 1978 the Kushi 
Institute opened in Boston to offer an in-depth course of studies in all aspects of 
macrobiotics. The Institute is presently planning to expand into a full-fledged college for 
macrobiotic studies. In 1982 a World Macrobiotic Directory was published, which showed 
that in the U.S. there were 22 East West Centers or Foundations and six other macrobiotic 
teaching centers, while in foreign countries there were 20 East West Centers and 
Foundations and two Kushi Institutes. There was also a network of very active macrobiotic 
study houses in Boston. At all of these institutions, soyfoods (especially miso, shoyu, 
tempeh, and tofu) have played an important part in the program of studies and classes. 
Michio periodically traveled to many of these centers, both in the U.S. and abroad, to 
teach.

As the macrobiotic movement developed in America, soyfoods gained in popularity. The 
use of tofu increased steadily as the daily practice of the dietary philosophy became less 
narrow and rigid. In the early days, some purists had considered tofu to be too yin to 
touch; many of these, to their anguish, developed an enormous craving for it and ate it on 
the sly. In about 1973 the Erewhon retail store had visited a Chinese tofu shop, Yah Kee on 
Tyler Street in Boston, and convinced them to use nigari (which Erewhon would provide) 
as a curding agent to make natural nigari tofu. The owner consented and this was probably 
the first nigari tofu made in America. Macrobiotic followers preferred nigari tofu, since the 
yang nigari (made from unrefined sea salt) was thought to balance the relatively yin 
soybeans and water. Yet although tofu was used more and more, it never fully outgrew the 
stigma of not being a "whole food" (since the okara was discarded) and of being too yin 
for use as a daily protein source or staple. For some it was a food to be used only 
occasionally or as a special treat. According to macrobiotic philosophy, the best misos for 
daily use were barley miso and Hatcho miso, which were more yang than rice miso. Thus 
the former came to be widely used. Because of macrobiotics, many Americans, including 
tens of thousands who did not eat a macrobiotic diet, began to take a deep interest in 
shoyu, especially natural shoyu, which was imported in large quantities from Japan, and 
which most macrobiotic followers (macros??) called "tamari" until the early 1980s, when 
the misnomer was finally straightened out (see Chapter 36). Natural shoyu, made from 
whole soybeans and incubated at the natural temperature of the environment for 18 
months, was considered to be the best and to have medicinal value, as was miso made in 
the same way. Great interest was shown in the details of the methods of manufacture, 
history, nutritional value, and flavor of fine natural shoyu and miso. Starting in mid-1980 
tempeh started to become very popular in Boston and, although it was not a Japanese food, 
it was prized in macrobiotic diets for its rich, meaty flavor and texture and its high vitamin 
B-12 content. One of its foremost proponents was Aveline Kushi, who introduced it in 
many cooking classes and wrote a laudatory article, "My Favorite Tempeh Recipes" for the 

East West Journal (August 1981). Thom Leonard, founder of the Ohio Miso Co., gave 
numerous classes in Boston on how to make tempeh, miso, natto, and tofu. Tempeh cutlets, 
burgers, and mock tuna salads were popular in Boston sandwich shops and restaurants.

A number of America's early and prominent manufacturers of soyfoods were strongly 
influenced by macrobiotics, most by the movement in Boston. Many of these located their 
businesses near Boston or on the East Coast. The first three non-Oriental miso companies 
in America were all founded by students of macrobiotics: Thom Leonard of Ohio Miso Co. 
(1979), John Belleme (and associates Sandy Pukel, Barry Evans, and Marty Roth) of 
American Miso Co. in North Carolina (1981), and Christian and Gaella Elwell of South 
River Miso Co. in Massachusetts (1982). Tofu makers included John Paino and Bob 
Bergwall of Nasoya in Massachusetts (1978) and Roberto Marocchesi of The Bridge in 
Connecticut (1981). Macrobiotic tempeh pioneers included Michael Morearty of Hi-Pro 
Tempeh and Lucio Armellin of 21st Century Soyfoods, both in Massachusetts (1981). The 
first Caucasian natto maker in the Western world, Charlie Kendall, began his craft working 
in his home in Boston in 1976.

From the mid-1960s until 1970 all of the natural shoyu imported by Erewhon had been 
made by Marushima Shoyu, located on the island of Marushima near Osaka. There was a 
growing suspicion by 1970 that the product was not made by the natural methods the 
company claimed it was; a visit to the plant by Shurtleff and Bob Gerner in April 1974 
confirmed the suspicion. Thus Erewhon sought another source. Mr. Kazama of Mitoku 
contacted Mr. Sasaki at Sendai Miso Shoyu, and he agreed to revive their traditional 
process (not used for many years) of making the shoyu from whole organically grown 
soybeans (imported from the U.S.) and incubating it in wooden vats at the natural 
temperature of the environment for two full summers. This was the famous Josen natural 
shoyu, eventually imported by many natural food distributors in the U.S.

During the mid and late 1970s Erewhon Trading Co. continued to grow by leaps and 
bounds. In 1977 sales were $8-10 million and there were 177 employees. The management 
was kept within the macrobiotic community, which meant that people relatively 
inexperienced at business were running an operation much more complex than they had 
had experience with. There was a rapid turnover in top management because of low wages, 
inability to participate in the company's ownership, and general "burnout." In early 1978 
the distribution company expanded into a huge warehouse facility at 3 East Street in 
Cambridge. The move, new rent, and new trucks were very expensive. To try to finance 
the new expansion Erewhon greatly expanded its product line to include many foods that 
were macrobiotic "taboos," including frozen meat and vitamin pills. In November 1979 
New Age reported in "From Alternative to Big Business" how the company found itself 
plagued with labor and financial crises. Still Erewhon kept expanding and by 1981 the 
company had annual gross sales estimated at $16-$17 million. Their 1981 catalog listed 
some 4,000 products, including a full line of imported and domestically made soyfoods, 
delivered to thousands of food stores, including a growing number of supermarkets. 
Wholesale value figures for the year ending June 1979 showed sales of shoyu at $200,000, 
tofu $110,000, and miso $100,000. Tofu sales were reported to be growing there at a rate 
equaled only by herbs (Whole Foods, Oct. 1979). Five types of miso were sold in packages 
or bulk: brown rice, red, Hatcho, barley, and finger lickin' natto miso. But beneath the 
surface of this runaway expansion, all was not well. On 10 November 1981 Erewhon, with 

debts totaling $4.3 million, filed for a Chapter 11 "reorganization" under the U.S. 
bankruptcy laws. The main problems had apparently been poor management, too rapid 
expansion, and decline in product quality. Then on 2 April 1982 Erewhon, including all of 
the Kushi's stock, was purchased for $1.3 million by Ronald Rosetti, the owner and 
president of Nature Food Centers, a chain of 85 health food stores that sold mostly vitamin 
pills and other dietary supplements--an ironic outcome indeed. Kushi was retained as a 
consultant and member of the board of directors. The company vacated their present 
location at 3 East St. and moved to Wilmington, Massachusetts; it was a completely 
separate entity from Nature Food Centers. Erewhon subcontracted with other companies to 
make its former foods under its strict supervision. Rosetti owned the three Erewhon retail 
stores. Erewhon sold its products only to major distributors, not to retail stores, and they 
were sold at Nature Food Centers. Strangely, the East West Journal made no mention of 
these major transformations. Was Erewhon a failure? Clearly not. It was a social, 
philosophical, and economic experiment which had pioneered a new concept in foods that 
had caught on and was prospering. It had been a major factor in introducing natural foods 
and soyfoods to America. Erewhon had served its purpose well.

Development of Macrobiotics in New York. After Herman Aihara and the Chico group 
left New York in 1961 and the Kushis left in 1963, something of a void was left. In 1964 or 
1965 Howard Rower established Infinity Foods, a macrobiotic and natural foods 
warehouse, that was a prime wholesale source for many of the early groups and students. 
He imported from Tokyo CI, which "guaranteed" the foods quasi-medicinal effects. The 
food was of top quality.

A key figure in New York was Michel Abehsera, a young Jewish French Moroccan, who 
began the macrobiotic diet and studies with Ohsawa in 1961. In the summer of 1964 he 
arrived with his wife in New York from Paris. For the next year they ran a small but 
popular macrobiotic restaurant in their home in the West Village. From 1964-1965 the 
owner of the Paradox restaurant allowed them to run it as their style of macrobiotic 
restaurant one day a week, Monday, the day it was usually closed. Again their restaurant 
was packed and very popular. In 1965 they moved uptown to 81st Street and Lexington 
Avenue and opened the East West Institute, where Michel lectured two nights a week and 
his wife gave cooking classes and sold macrobiotic foods. In 1966-67 they opened the 
restaurant L'Epicerie at 2nd Avenue and 57th Street, a beautiful place which became 
immensely popular. Macrobiotics was given a touch of elegance. In about 1967 Abehsera 
wrote his first macrobiotic cookbook, which he entitled The Cook is Yang. When he 
returned from Europe he was surprised to find that University Books had published it with 
the title Zen Macrobiotic Cooking; a mass market paperback edition was published by 
Avon in 1970. Abehsera's writing style was charming and engaging, and his recipes were 
more Western, less Oriental, than previous macrobiotic books, with an elegant yet simple 
French touch. In 1969 the Abehseras toured the entire U.S. in a Volkswagen bus, travelling 
9,500 miles and lecturing in 30 cities on macrobiotics. This was the first such tour in the 
U.S. and with it the movement grew, as did knowledge of miso and natural shoyu. In late 
1969 the Abehseras moved to Binghamton in upstate New York. Michel continued 
teaching and wrote Cooking for Life, which was published in 1970 in hardcover by Swann 
House and paperback by Avon. Like the first book, it continued many recipes for miso and 
shoyu. In 1970 he wrote an English version of Kervran's Biological Transmutation. In 
1972 he invited N. Muramoto to lecture in Binghamton on macrobiotic healing. Using 

notes from the lectures and adding some of his own experiences, he edited and compiled 
Muramoto's Healing Ourselves published by Avon/Swan House in 1973. The book 
continued to sell well into the 1980s. Abehsera played an important role in disseminating 
the macrobiotic teachings, westernizing them, and adding a sorely needed touch of humor 
and happiness to a movement that constantly threatened to get too serious and too rigid.

Development of Macrobiotics in California. We saw earlier how a group of people 
interested in macrobiotics had arrived in Chico from New York in early 1961 and started 
Chico-San, a macrobiotic food company. To help sales and the spread of macrobiotics, 
they started a lecture circuit. Chico-San was clearly one of the first of America's "new 
wave" of natural food companies, having been started three years before Erewhon. It 
pioneered in getting macrobiotic natural food products into health food conventions and 
out to large regional health-food distributors and retail food stores, thus making it easier 
for later companies to follow in the same footsteps. To some extent, it served as a model 
for later companies as well, and most key Erewhon people visited Chico-San during 
Erewhon's early days. Yet Chico-San remained somewhat of a "loner" in the subsequent 
burgeoning natural foods movement. By 1965 Chico-San's rice cakes and other products 
were being sold at more than 150 California outlets and the company had invented its own 
method of making rice syrup, a natural sweetener. In 1968 Chico-San established a 
subsidiary company, Spiral Foods, to handle sales of their new Feather River brand of 
products to the grocery trade. This subsidiary was merged back into Chico-San in 1976.

Since 1963 Chico-San's principals had been searching for a local farmer who would grow 
rice for them using organic methods. In 1968, at the same time Hawken was signing up 
Erewhon's first organic wheat growers, Kennedy signed a contract with Lundberg Brothers 
of Wehah Farm in Richvale, California (just south of Chico), guaranteeing to purchase all 
of their first organic rice crop. There was considerable risk on both sides since the 
Lundbergs were not sure how to deal with the inevitable weeds, insects, and low yields, 
and Kennedy had to guarantee that the farmers would not lose money in the case of a 
severely short crop. Nevertheless the experiment proved successful. The first crop was 
harvested in 1969. Chico-San had a five-year exclusive right to all the new rice. Yet a 
conflict soon developed between Chico-San and Erewhon. Already upset at Erewhon for 
taking away their New York market, Chico-San refused to sell Erewhon any of the new 
organic rice. So Erewhon established their own organic rice grower, Carl Garrich of Lone 
Pine Farms in Arkansas. Then it turned out that Chico-San had contracted for far more rice 
than they could sell, so the five-year exclusive was rendered null and void, and many new 
distributors were able to buy the Lundberg's rice.

Chico-San had been a major importer and distributor of miso and shoyu from Japan since 
the company started. (The first?) In 1963 Mr. Junsei Yamazaki had emigrated to Chico 
from Japan to make miso and natural shoyu for Chico-San. After graduating from Tokyo 
Agricultural University, Yamazaki had been a rice farmer in Japan for 17 years. In 1964 he 
began his first experimental production of miso and shoyu in Chico. His first large batches 
were made in mid-1970. By September 1972 Yamazaki had made three or four 55-gallon 
vats of miso (400 pounds of miso in each vat) and about the same amount of natural shoyu. 
However in that month a tragedy struck. A new rice machine shorted out, blew up, and 
started a fire that totally destroyed the Chico-San warehouse, with all its miso, shoyu, and 
most of its other foods. Eventually Chico-San moved into a new factory on First Street in 

Chico; a koji room was constructed and Yamazaki did make a small amount of miso again. 
But as Chico-San had been out of business for 7 months due to the fire, immediate profits 
were badly needed, so the long term miso and shoyu products had to be discontinued. 
Moving to Washington state, Yamazaki taught miso making to small groups of students. 
After the fire Chico-San expanded its imports of miso and shoyu (Lima Soy Sauce) from 
Japan. Chico-San still hopes to be able someday to have Yamazaki make his superior 
quality miso and shoyu for them. In late 1983 he moved back to northern California.

The work of teaching and developing educational institutions continued to be active. The 
lecture circuit started in the mid-1960s was kept active, as was publication of the 
Macrobiotic Monthly, started in New York. In 1968 (No. 5), for example, Aihara translated 
and published the account written by Dr. S. Akizuki of Nagasaki, Japan, of using miso to 
treat tuberculosis and atomic radiation exposure. In 1970, largely as a result of FDA 
scrutiny of relationships between food companies and educational programs, Aihara and 
Kennedy established the George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation (GOMF) at 1471 Tenth 
Avenue in San Francisco to continue educational activities separately from Chico-San. 
Aihara became director of GOMF and Kennedy of Chico-San. Also in 1970 the first of the 
popular macrobiotic summer camps (held annually by Herman and Cornellia since 1963) 
took place at French Meadows in the Tahoe National Forest, where it continued to be held 
thereafter. That year they also embarked on their first yearly 20,000-mile nationwide tour 
teaching macrobiotic philosophy and cookery. In 1972 Herman wrote and GOMF 
published Miso and Tamari, the first booklet on this subject in the West. It contained the 
first recipes in the West for making miso and miso pickles at home; recipes for making 
barley, rice, and Hatcho miso were given but it was suggested that good students should 
stop using rice miso after several years, as it was a little too yin. Cornellia edited The Do 
of Cooking (1972). In 1974 a revised and expanded version of the book, entitled Soybean 
Diet, was published. It contained extensive information on miso and shoyu, plus a small 
amount of information on tofu, okara, and natto. In 1973 the Aiharas established the Vega 
Institute, a residential program for macrobiotic studies in San Francisco. Then in 1974 it 
and GOMF were moved to Oroville, a town southeast of Chico, where the Aiharas have 
continued their work, together with their students. Their cooking classes, lecture tours 
(which included trips abroad) and other publications such as The Chico-San Cookbook and 
the Calendar Cookbook, each of which contains numerous soyfoods recipes, have done 
much to popularize these foods in the West. As of 1982 Herman was writing a number of 
works, including a biography of Ohsawa.

Over the years Chico-San grew steadily. In 1978 they expanded into a new facility in 
Chico. A large magazine ad campaign began in 1981 and prominent mention was made of 
soyfoods: Lima Soy Sauce, miso, black soybeans, barley and rice miso, koji (for making 
miso), nigari (for making tofu), tekka miso, and real Lima Tamari (wheat free). The soy 
sauce was said to be aged for two years.

In June 1971 Noboru Muramoto emigrated to America from Japan and lived with the 
Aiharas in San Francisco at GOMF. In Japan he had studied Chinese literature and 
philosophy at Tohoku University and Kanazawa University, then began his own study and 
practice of herbal medicine. He had begun studying Ohsawa's writings in 1942, then 
studied with Ohsawa after 1964, while running a family business cleaning the cotton from 
futons. In 1973 he gave a series of lectures in New York which were published that year as 

the popular book, Healing Ourselves (Avon/Swan House). Many uses of miso and natural 
shoyu were given; soybeans and tofu were not recommended in the book, except that tofu 
was used in making poultice-like "plasters" for use in healing. In 1974 Muramoto started 
Rising Sun, a macrobiotic storefront containing the Herb Tea Co. in San Francisco. Here 
he gave classes on making miso and shoyu. In November 1976 he acquired Top of the 
World Ranch on 140 acres of land near Glen Ellen, California, and established Asunaro 
Institute, a residential program of macrobiotic studies. He also published a newsletter 
"Asunaro Notes." At Asunaro he set up a regular shop for making miso and shoyu, 
complete with a nice koji incubation room. Many unique and American-style misos were 
developed, including some made with peanuts, garbanzos (chickpeas), azuki beans, and 
even natto. A number of Americans apprenticed at the miso-shoyu school. A nice article 
about the school, "Making Miso in America," appeared in the East West Journal (Lachman 
1978). In March 1979 Muramoto displayed his miso and shoyu equipment and samples of 
his products at the famous New Earth Exposition in San Francisco. He also sold these 
products at Rising Sun, and some customers swore that they were the best in America.

Nutritional Views of Macrobiotic Diet. Following the death of Beth Ann Simon in 1965 
and well into the 1970s it was common for nutritionists and doctors writing articles in 
scientific journals to refer to the macrobiotic diet as an example of an extreme and 
unhealthy, even dangerous diet. Among many health professionals, the diet soon acquired 
the image of the epitome of such an undesirable diet. Surprisingly, leaders of the 
macrobiotic movement did little to counter this image (even though many who propagated 
it knew relatively little about macrobiotics), nor did they do much to invite scientific 
enquiry into the nutritional value of the diet or its effects on those who practiced it. They 
just kept teaching.

The two earliest known scientific studies on the effects of a macrobiotic diet were by 
Sacks and co-workers from the Harvard Medical School and Boston City Hospital. The 
1974 report showed that the systolic and diastolic blood pressure of vegetarian macros was 
significantly lower than that of typical Americans. The second study on 133 people who 
had practiced a macrobiotic diet for an average of three years showed that mean 
cholesterol levels were only 68% of those found in typical Americans, low-density 
lipoproteins were 62%, very-low density lipoproteins were 69%, triglyceride levels were 
69%, mean body weight was 73%, and skin fold thickness was 35% of the norm. These 
low blood pressure levels and strikingly low plasma lipid levels were very impressive, and 
helped to give the macrobiotic diet some respectability in professional health care circles. 
The next important scientific study published in 1979 by Dwyer and co-workers of the 
New England Medical Center Hospital raised some serious questions about the diet. It 
showed that diets of preschool macrobiotic children in Boston were strongly deficient in 
vitamin D (average intake was only 8% of the RDA), calcium (40% of the RDA), and 
phosphorus (63% of the RDA), and for each nutrient the intake of the macros was far 
below that of children from other vegetarian groups. Two macro children had rickets, a 
rare disease in America, and the scientists were surprised that there was not more evidence 
of rickets and bowed legs; they urged leaders of the macrobiotic movement to encourage 
their students to increase their intake of vitamin D, calcium, and phosphorus. No coverage 
of these highly significant findings was given in the East West Journal or any other 
macrobiotic publication that we know of.

These studies point to both the strong points (low blood lipids) and weak points (low 
mineral intake) of typical macrobiotic diets. More general criticisms of the diet, from 
various quarters, included the following: The philosophical basis of the diet, that the 
balance of potassium and sodium salts in the diet was the prime determinant of health, was 
a dubious and as yet untested hypothesis, which would be very difficult to test. Thus the 
diet had no basis in established nutritional science, and did not seem particularly interested 
in developing one. Macrobiotics failed or refused to incorporate into its dietary philosophy 
and teaching large portions of the body of Western nutritional and medical knowledge 
established by reproducible experimental research during a period of more than 100 years. 
These concerns included minimum and recommended daily allowances for key nutrients 
such as vitamins, minerals, protein, etc., which macrobiotics rarely discussed. By 
denigrating the value of dairy products (the sine qua non in diets recommended by most 
Western nutritionists yet not traditionally used in East Asia) the macrobiotic diet sharply 
conflicted with Western standards and made it difficult for followers to obtain adequate 
intakes of calcium and vitamin D. The macrobiotic diet was typically very high in salt, 
although this began to decrease from the mid-1970s. Many people interested in natural and 
health foods were surprised to see how many macrobiotics (following Michio Kushi) 
openly and without apology smoked tobacco and drank beer (alcohol from fermented 
grains was held to be better than that from fermented fruits). Some maintained that the real 
value of the macrobiotic message was the return to simpler, traditional vegetarian diets 
based on whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and few refined foods; the yin-yang 
philosophy was largely dispensable.

Yet in stressing the importance of diet as a primary factor in good health, urging the return 
to traditional grain-centered diets, pointing out the dangers of excess consumption of 
sugar, meat, alcohol, drugs, and food additives, and in other areas discussed earlier under 
Ohsawa's dietary teachings, macrobiotics played a pioneering role in American dietary 
reform from 1960 on. The influential Dietary Goals published in 1977 by the Senate 
Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs (McGovern Committee; see Chapter 
22), recommended dietary changes strikingly similar to those recommended by 
macrobiotics. This publication lent considerable prestige to macrobiotic and other 
traditional diets. By the mid-1970s one could discern the beginnings of a shift in attitude 
toward macrobiotics by professionals. Physicians such as Frank Sacks and Edward Kass at 
Harvard and ?? Castelli, Director of the Framingham Heart Study endorsed macrobiotics. 
Dr. Mendelsohn (sp??), somewhat of a maverick physician but former head of the Illinois 
medical licensing board, strongly supported macrobiotics in two books, numerous 
interviews, and a newsletter. Nathan Pritikin, author of very popular books on diet and 
health, and head of a clinic that was very successful in treating degenerative diseases by 
diet, used a regimen similar to macrobiotics and spoke well of macrobiotics.

But it was miraculous cancer cures that cast macrobiotics into the national limelight 
starting in 1980. That year, after about a year of eating a strict macrobiotic diet and 
receiving consultations from Michio Kushi, Dr. Anthony Sattilaro, a physician and then 
chief administrator at Methodist Hospital in South Philadelphia, experienced an almost 
miraculous complete recovery from terminal cancer that had riddled his body. The 
dramatic story was published in East West Journal (March 1980 and March 1981), the 
Saturday Evening Post (Aug. 1981/Sept 1980??), and LIFE magazine (Aug. 1982 1981??), 
then eventually in a best-selling book Recalled by Life (Sattilaro 1982). Sensationalist 

tabloids such as the National Enquirer also picked up the story. Eventually millions of 
people read of Satillaro's cancer cure. Macrobiotic centers nationwide were deluged with 
enquiries, new macrobiotic books were published on cancer and diet, the Kushi's did tours 
speaking on the subject, and for the first time America stopped to listen. Scientific tests 
using the diet for cancer patients were being run at the time of this writing. All of this 
greatly increased the respectability of macrobiotic and traditional diets, and soyfoods 
benefited directly by the halo effect.

Macrobiotics in Europe and Latin America. In Europe the first company to produce, 
import, and distribute macrobiotic foods was Lima N.V. (Ltd.), started in 1959 by Pierre 
Gevaert and friends at Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium. They made naturally fermented miso 
and shoyu from 1959-1966, then resumed production again in January 1981 after selling 
off excess inventories. In late January 1981 Lima re-commenced making miso and by the 
year's end they were producing 1,200 kg of barley miso a month in Belgium and France. 
They planned to make 800 liters of natural shoyu a month in France from March 1982?? In 
these products they used organically grown soybeans, barley, and wheat, plus spring water. 
Soyfoods listed in their October 1981 catalog were soy flour, shoyu, tamari, Hatcho miso, 
barley miso, rice miso, instant miso soup, soymilk, and tofu. Other major macrobiotic 
distributors in Europe included Harmony and Sunwheel in England, Wagon Wheel in 
Ireland, Manna in the Netherlands, De Brandnetel in Belgium, Satori in Italy, and 
Urtekram in Denmark.

After visits by Michio Kushi, East West Centers started throughout Europe--there were 14 
in 1981, including Kushi Institutes in London, Amsterdam, and Paris. Kushi traveled often 
and widely in Europe. Kushi international seminars were offered in major cities, and a 
European Union for educational activities reached many people. Each country had at least 
one macrobiotic publication in the national language and some countries had Japanese 
macrobiotic teachers (e.g. Jiro Nakamura in Germany). In the spring of 1981 Le Compas 
in France did a long cover story on soyfoods.

In Europe, much more than in America, the soyfoods movement has been pioneered by 
macrobiotic soycrafters. As of April 1982 the following were active. In the Netherlands 
Sjon Welters made tempeh, taught about soyfoods and inspired many, Witte Wonder and 
De Morgenstond were tofu shops, Jakso (Peter Dekker) made the first tempeh from 
organic soybeans, and Manna did much creative marketing. In France Mr. Sakaguchi and 
Francois Hayman were early tofu makers in Paris, Bernard Storup and Jean de Preneuf 
joined to form Soy SARL (later renamed Societe Soy), a modern tofu company, and Jean 
Luc Alonso of Traditions du Grain introduced tempeh to France. In Denmark Per 
Fruergaard started Tofu Denmark, the country's first. In Great Britain John Sandler taught 
tofu, tempeh, and miso making at the Kushi Institute and made tempeh at the East West 
Center, Paul Jones ran an innovative tofu shop, and Jane O'Brien did education and writing 
in Ireland. In Belgium Jonathan made tofu and soymilk (they were the biggest macrobiotic 
food producer in Europe), and small tofu shops were run by de Brandnetel and Seven 
Arrows. The work of Lima NV with miso and shoyu was very active. In Portugal Unimave 
made tofu and soymilk. In Switzerland Verena Krieger, Hans Opplinger, and Restaurant 
Sesam did pioneering work with tofu and tempeh. In Italy Gilberto Bianchini introduced 
tofu. The combined effect of all these and many other efforts by macros interested in 

soyfoods had a very large effect in introducing soyfoods to Europe.

Macrobiotics has been active in South America since 1954, when Ohsawa's first students 
Tomio Kikuchi and Flavio Zanatta started work there. Restaurants and cooking classes 
have helped introduce soyfoods. This is seen as a region of great future potential.

A Major Contribution. The International macrobiotic movement has played a very 
significant role in introducing soyfoods, natural foods, and organic agricultural techniques 
to the Western world. Numerous soycrafters in both the U.S. and Europe have been 
strongly influenced by macrobiotics, as have several leaders of the movement on both 
continents. Before the advent of macrobiotics in the West, virtually no Westerners were 
eating traditional East Asian soyfoods, except for a little soy sauce in Oriental cuisine. 
These foods were considered interesting oddities, but macros?? made them widely 
available, educated the public about them, developed a market for them, felt they were an 
important part of a healthful or healing diet, and were the first Westerners to eat them 
regularly. Kotzsch (1981) estimated that there were perhaps 20,000 followers of 
macrobiotics in the U.S. Those who have improved their diets and heard of soyfoods via 
macrobiotics are probably a million or more. The contribution of the macrobiotic 
movement in introducing soyfoods to the West continues to grow. 

Part 1