Many people habitually call Japanese people "Little Japan", in fact, it is not without reason. In everyone's impression, the height of the Japanese is generally relatively short, according to relevant historical records, in the period of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the entire Japanese army, the average height of soldiers is only about 150 centimeters, even the guns at that time, but also higher than them.
According to relevant historical records, from the Jomon period to the Meiji Restoration at the beginning of the 1920s and 1930s, the fact that Japanese people are very short in height is the general default impression.
In related archaeological research, professional researchers have also speculated on the height of japanese people based on those excavated objects. It is speculated that in the Jomon period, the average height of Japanese men was around 158 centimeters, and the average height value of women was around 149 centimeters.
The Japanese learned to cultivate rice during the Yayoi and Kofun periods, and rice cultivation was the key to solving the problem of food and clothing, and it was also the key to ensuring the nutrition needed by the human body. Because of this, in terms of food improvements, the average height value of Japanese people in this period reached almost 163 centimeters for men, and the average height value for women also increased to 152 centimeters. However, this height did not continue to grow.
It is recorded in the "Sayings of the Emperor" that Buddhism began to spread to Japan from 538 AD, which aroused the admiration of many people in Japan, especially the ruling class. As we all know, in the Buddhist belief, it is necessary to abstain from meat, so in the weekday diet, it is necessary to remove meat. At that time, in order to spread the Dharma well, the ruling class of Japan even issued a "meat ban order" that forbade everyone to eat meat.
People themselves are omnivorous life, meat for human beings, is an important source of nutrition, said do not eat too much, but, how much or have to eat, in order to ensure their own nutritional supply and demand. Therefore, after the promulgation of the "Meat Ban", everyone could only eat vegetarian food all day, but in the long run, it caused malnutrition. In this case, many people do not grow up in a hundred years. Therefore, it is recorded in the historical records that later, the average height of men in Japan as a whole was only about 157 centimeters, and the average height value of women was only 144 centimeters, which was the lowest in history.
However, in the history of Japan, there is such a "female giant", her height has reached 174 centimeters, her name is Sakamoto Otome. Someone has analyzed the reason why she is so tall, Sakamoto Otome has loved sports since she was very young, whether it is horseback riding, or swordsmanship, etc., she is very good at it. In Japan, people know that she is a woman who is both literate and martial. Coupled with her rare height, it can be said that she was very famous at that time.
In addition, in the entire history of Japan, the tallest person was the Edo period Iwatsu whale Taizoemon, he was a sumo wrestler, it is said that his height, reached 227 cm, the weight is also 169 kg. However, there are also sayings that he suffers from "gigantism", which is why he is so high. Therefore, at the age of 24, he died young.
In recent years, the height of Japanese people has increased a lot. Japan gradually realized the problem of height, especially after World War II, and saw the difference between the height of its own army and other countries, and began to pay attention to the improvement of diet. As a result, in Japan, from the first grade of elementary school to junior high school, Japanese students can get free milk every day. In 1954, in order to implement this matter and ensure the nutrition of children, the government also promulgated the "School Feeding Law", which distributed free "nutritious lunches" to children.
Now, after so many years, the overall height of Japanese people has also increased a lot, from the data point of view, the average height of Japanese men has also been 170.8 centimeters, and the height of women has also been 158 centimeters on average.