Distaste for and Abnormal Reactions to Meat on Aogashima Island

Abstract

Of 231 inhabitants of Aogashima Island which is located to the south of Hachijojima Island, 25% of males and 45% of females have distaste for meat; in Koganeimachi of Tokyo where I investigated just after working at Aogashima, 16% of males and 30% of females have distaste for meat. The peoples of both places, however, do not dislike fish so much.
Thus in Aogashima, the tendency toward disliking meat is unusually strong. Furthermore there are many, 15 % of the islanders, who suffer from urticaria, abdominal pains, diarrhoea and vomiting after eating meat. And four of seven shajins and all of eleven mikos have rather stronger distaste for meat. (shajin or miko means a man or a woman who is in service of the ritual of a shrine. They seem to have peculiar mental characters in Aogashima.)
It may be safe to say that females have more distaste for meat than males. (This interests us when we can often see meat taboos especially for women of primitive societies in the tropical and subtropical zones.) The ratio of those females who do not like meat increases when they are above twenty years of age in Aogashima, whereas the ratio reverses in Koganei machi.