Growth deceleration in Japanese schoolchildren with special reference to those in the city of Sendai.

Small, yet steady secular gain in height and weight of school children in the city of Sendai in past 15 years.

“…The observation during and soon after the war time (Kondo et al 1978) as well as in 1960's-1970's (Ikeda et al 1983) have been described previously. In succession to these reports, the observa -Received September 16, 1988; revision accepted for publication October 18, 1988. tion in 1973 to 1987 is described in this article to report that there has been small yet continuous secular gain in the past 15 years both in height and weight among Sendai school children.…”

“…The measures (to the nearest 0.1 cm for height and to the nearest 0.1 kg for weight) were supplied by the Sendai City Education Commission to this Department for statistical evaluation. The data have been stored in the Height-Weight Data File of Sendai City School Children (Kondo et al 1978;Ikeda et al 1983;Ikeda and Watanabe 1985) with due caution for protection of privacy. In the present study, the data for 1973 to 1987 were retrieved for analysis.…”

Possible urban-rural difference in habitus of school children in Sendai.

“…The national school health data on the body habitus of children are based on the stratified sampling at a rate of 3 to 4% (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture 1989). Such analysis of a topographic scale as the present study is hardly possible unless each and all children are examined like the October measurement done in the city of Sendai (Kondo et al 1978;Ikeda et al 1983;Nakatsuka et al 1989). …”

“…The lack of statistical significance in some cases, e.g., the comparison of Sendai and Akiu boys in 6 year-grade of primary schools, may probably due to small number of children in one region; this difficulty will be solved by combining the data of several years to come for comparison. In previous analyses in the effect of urbanization on the body habitus of school children on the basis of whole Japan, it was observed that the urban-rural difference once evident in 1950's and 1960's (Kondo et al 1978) was no longer remarkable in late 1970's (Ikeda et al 1983). Similar analysis with the latest national school health data (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture 1989) confirmed that there is no significant urbanization-related difference in height and weight of school children and that only north-south difference persists.…”

“…Children in urbanized areas once tended to be taller and/or heavier than their counterparts in rural areas (Kondo et al 1978), but such urban-rural difference in body habitus has gradually faded out in the city of Sendai in accordance with the expansion of urban areas and disappearance of surrounding farming zones (Ikeda et al 1983;Nakatsuka et al 1988a). In 1987In -1988, there was a large-scale merge involving two cities of Sendai and Izumi, and two towns of Miyagi and Akiu to form a new and enlarged city of Sendai.…”