Ohsawa was born into a poor
samurai family in
Shingu City, Wakayama Prefecture. He had no money for higher education. Around 1913, he joined the
Shokuiku movement, studying with Manabu Nishibata, a direct disciple of the late
Sagen Ishizuka, in
Tokyo.
William Dufty describes the background ("Nyoiti" is a variant transcription of "Nyoichi"): The gradual introduction of
sugar into the Japanese diet brought in its wake the beginning of Western diseases. A Japanese
midwife, trained in the techniques of Western medicine as a nurse, fell ill and was abandoned as incurable by the Western doctors she had espoused. Three of her children died the same way. The fourth, Nyoiti Sakurazawa, rebelled at the notion of dying of tuberculosis and ulcers in his teens. He took up the study of ancient Oriental medicine which had been officially outlawed in Japan. Sakurazawa was attracted to the unorthodox career of a famous Japanese practitioner,
Dr. Sagen Ishizuka. Thousands of patients had been cured by Ishizuka (through traditional use of food) after they had been abandoned as incurable by the new medicine of the West. Ohsawa claimed to have cured himself of
tuberculosis at the age of 19 by applying the ancient Chinese concept of
yin and yang as well as the teachings of Sagen Ishizuka. Later he traveled in Europe and began to spread his philosophy in
Paris. It was in this period that he adopted his pen name "Ohsawa", supposedly from the French
Oh, ça va, which means "All right" or "I'm doing fine" as a reply to the question "how are you doing?"). After several years, he returned to Japan to start a foundation and gather recruits for his now formalized philosophy. In 1931, he published
The Unique Principle explaining the yin and yang order of the universe. After drawing attention during
World War II for his
pacifist ideals, he wrote a book that predicted
Japan's defeat, writing: "I ask Japan's ruling class to remember...those responsible in France were shot to death," emphasizing the wartime outbreaks of disease and hunger. Over 100,000 copies were distributed before he was incarcerated and tortured by the
Kempeitai in May and faced continued violence from the police, right-wing groups, and military. In 1942 war with the US began. After being freed from prison by U.S.
General MacArthur, he moved his institution to a remote area in the mountains of
Yamanashi Prefecture. In 1961, he wrote
Zen Macrobiotic, referring to the
macrobiotic diet that had been advocated by
Christoph Hufeland in Germany since 1796. Subsequently, the philosophy of Ohsawa has been referred to as macrobiotics. While he was in France, Ohsawa wrote a number of books in French, which were published by Vrin Publishers in Paris. Among them were ''L'Ere Atomique et la Philosophie d'Extrême-Orient'' (The Atomic Age and the Philosophy of the Far East), written during the
Cuban Missile Crisis. In this book, as in all the books Ohsawa wrote, he devoted considerable space to explaining how macrobiotics can shed light on many social problems as well as the causes of war, and help bring about a world in which war will be seen as an outcome of an error of judgment, and discarded as an effective solution to social conflict. Ohsawa also created a stir by predicting the deaths of several notable people, including
John F. Kennedy based on the condition known in Japan as "
sanpaku" (literally "three whites"), a traditional Japanese
physiognomic diagnosis in which a white area below as well as to each side of the
iris appears when the eye is viewed straight on. This anomaly was considered a sign of extreme fatigue that made one accident-prone and slow to react. Samurai were trained to watch for this feature to assist in determining how formidable an enemy would be in hand-to-hand combat. Ohsawa used this diagnosis in his teachings and adapted it as a more general diagnostic indication of one's general state of health. The
assassination of President Kennedy led
Tom Wolfe to write:
Abdul Karim Kassem,
Ngo Dinh Diem, and President Kennedy, all
sanpaku and, now, shot to death, all destroyed by the fate of the sanpaku, which is more than coincidence and should be an alarm signal to men and nations, say the Macrobiotics, for thus it has been demonstrated by their leader, George Ohsawa, Japanese prophet of the Unique Principle. This article caught the attention of
William Dufty, who, finding relief in the
brown rice diet recommended by Ohsawa, became an advocate of macrobiotics, and traveled to Paris to meet with Ohsawa and publisher
Felix Morrow. Ohsawa handed Dufty a package, and said, "Here is a lifetime of writing. Do your best with them. It's your turn." In 1965 Morrow's firm, University Books, published Ohsawa's writings under the provocative title
You Are All Sanpaku. ==Death==