The Motor Performance of a Rural Population in Japan

Abstract

This paper is one of several reports of ecological cooperation between cultural and physical anthropologists in Sata-Mura, Kagoshima Prefecture, in the spring of 1953. Resaerch was conducted on inhabitants, male and female of all ages except pre-school children, engaging in agriculture involving heavy labour and with little contact with urban civilization. The following simple tests were selected because research was conducted in the field: (1) tapping (manual repetition of motor speed), (2) picking up balls (finger dexterity), (3) match board (manual dexterity), (4) reaction time; measured by getting the subject to pick up a stick dropped suddenly, (5) Burpee test (body agility), (6) static balancing (testing the length of time the subject can stand tiptoe on a bar) and (7) closing one eye (the development of the mimic muscles). (3) and (5) were applied only to children.As a rule children attain the adult level of motor performance at 15 years of age when most of them finish their compulsory schooling and start full-time agricultural labour, Their contemporaries who advance to a higher level of schooling progressively improve. Some decline of performance appears at about 40-50 years of age, and is especially notable in (6), while the older people show constancy in (7) and (2) as long as they can work, exclusive of abnormal conditions. Individual variation seems to become greater toward the close of life, some old people being quite lively while others are less so. In general, sexual differences are not noticeable in (2) and (3). With regard to (1), (4) and (5), males excel females. (6) and (7) show that girls are somewhat superior to boys, but this relation is reversed after adolescence. Possibly girls are more adapt in static balancing and boys in dynamic, but women may lose their superiority after the onset of menopause for physiological and psychological reasons. Labour activity among agricultural people is not only closely linked with the motor performance as mentioned above, but is also based on physical strength and endurance, factors which were not measured. I believe that the relationships of physical capacity and labour longevity to culture are important from an ecological point of view. Senile phenomena are what the complex of the individual experience the culture of a community and the natural environments elaborate upon the human organism.I suggest that a gerontological approach provides us with the necessary means of resolving the problems of contact among the physical, mental and cultural entities of a human being.