Navel Exercise

Japan has long had a special regard for the navel. The shape of the umbilicus of a newborn baby would be discussed at length, and if it happened to point downward, the parents would brace themselves for a weakling child who would bring them woe. The thunder god Raijin, with his terrifying drums, his great horns and long tusks, was said to have an insatiable appetite for young navels, and mothers had constantly to nag their youngsters to keep themselves well covered up. But for all the national preoccupation with it, the navel in Japan never quite achieved the status of a cult. Then along came an imaginative and dedicated retired secretary named Koji Murata.

A once sickly child ("At the time, my navel was down-beamed"), Murata became fascinated as a young man with health fads, began delving into the Spartan training of the Zen Buddhist priests. By 1951, at the age of 55, he had built up a whole philosophy around the navel's influence on health. He started the Hesoten (literally, Navel Heaven) Society, swooped down upon factory and-office to proclaim that "the heaven-pointed navel receives blessings therefrom." The navel, he told his growing audiences, is "a medal of culture with which every person is born. Polish it. Value it."

As the years passed, more and more pallid clerks and exhausted executives began taking Murata's advice by exercising their navels twice a day. The master himself, who looks 15 years younger than he is, climbed down into coal mines to spread the word. He spoke over the radio, taught the maids in the hotels he stayed at how to use their navels while cleaning and scrubbing.*His crusade got results. Executives found themselves less tense, employees more eager, and the phrase "Your navel isn't in it" is now a part of the Japanese language. Today 160 firms and organizations are members of the Navel Heaven movement.

Last week Murata's long-awaited book on his philosophy finally came out, and though copies of it were snatched up, its author was no longer alone in the navel business. One of Japan's top beauticians, Mrs. Aiko Yamano, hit upon the idea of mixing a perfumed olive oil with a bit of lanolin and persuading women to pour a few drops into their navels before retiring. She called her oil "BB" for Brigitte Bardot. Girls in their 20s, she found, began sprouting pimples in spite of this treatment, but women over 30 developed clear, smooth skins. Within four days her first 10,000 bottles were sold.

*Method, also to be used when driving cars or writing letters: learn to let the air out of the lungs in small proportions by momentarily tensing muscles around navel as each portion is exhaled.

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