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Takagi Kanehiro (1849–1920), director of the Tokyo Naval Hospital and
head of the Bureau of Medical Affairs of the Navy. Takagi, who had
studied anatomy and clinical medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical
College in London, drew attention to the fact that beriberi was a typically
‘Asian’ disease, rarely occurring among Westerners. Presuming that the illness
was a result of a very low protein intake, Takagi suggested that a diet
comparable to that of Western navies might be a remedy. In 1884, to prove
this theory, meals comparable to that served in the British Navy – bread,
ship biscuits, salted meat and beans – replaced the rice-based meals on the
experimental ship Tsukuba. The ship reached the destination of Hawai’i
with no beriberi patient on board. Since the concept of vitamins had not yet
been discovered, Takagi was unable to determine precisely the cause of the
disease, but he was correct to link it with nutrition. 47 The effectiveness of
Takagi’s measures convinced the naval leadership that he had found a
solution to the beriberi problem and ordered the entire fleet to shift to a
Western-style diet of ship’s biscuits, dried beans and canned beef. 48
In the long run, the measures Takagi suggested proved too costly for
the navy’s budget. The solution developed in the army was much cheaper
and convenient. In 1884 Horiuchi Toshikuni managed to reduce beriberi
cases in the Osaka division by mixing rice with barley, and by 1891 the
practice of serving the rice-and-barley mixture instead of white rice was
diffused in many army units. 49 The measure was not very welcome, though,
since white rice was a preferred staple. 50
A scientific explanation for beriberi could not be found without the
concept of vitamin, which did not become properly understood until the
1920s. The military physician Mori Rintarō, better known under his literary
pseudonym Mori Ōgai, shared the belief widespread in the scientific
world that beriberi was an infectious disease. Upon Mori’s appointment as
Surgeon General of the Imperial Japanese Army in 1907, the practice of
serving the rice-barley mixture instead of white rice in army units was discontinued.
He was also a severe critic of measures introduced in the navy
under Takagi’s recommendation. In 1909 the Army Ministry appointed the
Board of Inquiry into the Prevention of Beriberi with Mori as its chairman.
51 The following year Suzuki Umetarō (1874–1943) of Tokyo
University, who was involved in the work of the committee, succeeded in
demonstrating the link between vitamin b deficiency and beriberi. After 1925,
the mixture of rice and barley in the proportion 7 to 3 became officially the
standard staple in the Japanese military. 52
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