Although the number of Japanese who know about this is also decreasing, in the Meiji era, Japan imitated the territorial expansion principle of Western countries and also had ambition that she wanted to get the territory of Manchuria due to resource shortage, so she was to fight with Russia at that time. Shogun Nogi Maresuke tried to attack Russian troops from the front. Until just before the Battle of Tsushima, how many lives were lost by the human wave tactics called frontal assault! The dead had been increasing until Kodama Gentaro, Shogun Nogi Maresuke’s superior, persuaded this army and changed the operation that they attack the bases of 203 highlands where they can attack Russian troops from the top of the mountain.

Although the history books said a total of 100,000 soldiers died in it, the 27,000 soldiers in the army, about 1/3 among them, died by another reason. That’s the wrong meal.

At that time, there were not only the conflicts of war strategy, but also the conflicts of the meal plan to let the soldiers eat. Whereas the army let the soldiers eat delicious white rice and caused massive deaths by beriberi, Takagi Kanehiro in the navy insisted that they would not suffer from beriberi if they ate the rice boiled with barley, and resolved the deaths from beriberi by that.

Mori Ohgai, famous as a literary scholar in Japan, was the top of the army’s doctor at that time and didn’t listen to this navy’s suggestion. He went to German and studied the medicine whose mainstream was Koch, the authority of pathogen, and believed that the cause of beriberi was due to pathogen. Therefore, he opposed the idea of making the rice boiled with barley a staple food until the last moment.

Well, are there no modern people who suffered from beriberi? However, this is also the hidden and major modern disease, actually. Beriberi is not caused in people; people in the middle class and above, especially in Europe and U. S., those who eat plenty of brown rice, 10 different cereals including rice, whole-grain cereal, and whole-grain bread, and get high level nutritional information and practice it; Japanese who properly eat many side dishes and brown rice.

People who take instant noodles, fast foods, soft drinks, and alcohols become deficient in not only vitamin B1, but also vitamins B complex. As a result of this, they are irritated, can’t stay focused, and feel listless easily. They are bad postures and hate exercise. Of course they can’t study and can’t work at company if they are deficient in not only vitamin B1 but also B group. And people who lack energy, feel listless, and are gloomy are increasing, and people who really lost their temper are also going to increase in the whole society. Your town where you live, your family, and you are not deficient in vitamin B1? Beriberi tends to be considered olden disease but actually it is a big problem for modern people. In a widening economic disparity, it can be said that the new gap of getting beriberi is caused.

In U.S. and Europe, people pay tips and have a meal, take exercise and plenty of vegetables, and there is no one who suffers from beriberi in the group of people in favor of brown rice. In the low-income groups, wouldn’t there be the spread of obesity and beriberi with double?