Japan’s longevity expert dies at 105
Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, who cautioned against gluttony and early retirement and vigorously championed annual medical checkups, climbing stairs regularly and just having fun — advice that helped make Japan the world leader in longevity — has died. Dutifully practicing the credo of physician heal thyself, he lived to 105.
When he died, Hinohara was chairman emeritus of St. Luke’s International University and honorary president of St. Luke’s International Hospital, both in Tokyo. The cause was respiratory failure, the hospital said.
“He is one of the persons who built the foundations of Japanese medicine,” said Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary.
Hinohara was born in 1911, when the average Japanese person was unlikely to survive past 40. He never wasted a day defying the odds.
He ministered to victims of the firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War. He was taken hostage in1970, when Japanese Red Army terrorists hijacked a commercial jet. He was able to treat 640 of the victims of a radical cult’s subway poison gas attack in 1995 (all but one survived), because he had presciently equipped his hospital the year before to handle mass casualties in the event of an incident such as an earthquake.
He also wrote a musical for children when he was 88, and a bestselling book when he was101. He recently took up golf. Until a few months ago he was still treat- ing patients and kept a date book with space for five more years of appointments.
In the early-1950s, Hinohara pioneered a system of complete annual physicals — called “human dry-dock” — that has been credited with helping to lengthen the average life span of Japanese people. Women born there today can expect to live to 87; men, to 80.
In the 1970s, he reclassified strokes and heart disorders — commonly perceived as inevitable adult diseases that required treatment — to lifestyle ailments that were often preventable.
He imposed few inviolable health rules, although he did recommend some basic guidelines: Avoid obesity, take the stairs (he did, two steps at a time) and carry your own packages and luggage. Remember that doctors cannot cure everything. Don’t underestimate the beneficial effects of music and the company of animals; both can be therapeutic. Don’t ever retire, but if you must, do so a lot later than age 65. And prevail over pain simply by enjoying yourself.
“We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep,” he often said. “I believe we can keep that attitude as adults — it is best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.”
Hinohara maintained his weight at about 130 pounds. His diet was spartan: coffee, milk and orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil for breakfast; milk and a few biscuits for lunch; vegetables with a small portion of fish and rice for dinner.
Hinohara graduated in1937, from Kyoto Imperial University’s College of Medicine. He began practicing at St. Luke’s International Hospital in 1941. (It was founded by a missionary at the beginning of the 20th century.) He became its director in 1992.
In 1970, he was flying to a medical conference in Japan when his plane was hijacked by radical Communists armed with swords and pipe bombs. He was among 130 hostages who spent four days trapped in 100-degree heat until the hijackers released their captives and flew to North Korea, where they were offered asylum.
“I believe that I was privileged to live,” he later said, “so my life must be dedicated to other people.”
After spending his first six decades supporting his family, Hinohara devoted the remainder of his life largely to volunteer work.
Until the last few months, he would work up to18 hours a day. Using a cane, he would exercise by taking 2,000 or more steps a day. In March, unable to eat, he was hospitalized. But he refused a feeding tube and was discharged. Months later, he died at home.