Minoru Kamata, a doctor and author who has been working in rural medical care for 50 years and has been advocating for the creation of a body that stays healthy through diet and a little exercise, will be appearing on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi), which will be broadcast at 1:00 p.m. on May 16th.
The first hospital she worked at, Suwa Central Hospital (Chino City, Nagano Prefecture), was an unpopular hospital with a cumulative deficit of 400 million yen. She held health classes and appealed to women to "eat miso soup with less salt and lots of ingredients," but they responded, "My husband told me that I should just take over the taste of our family, so that's not possible."
Wanting to somehow get the men to listen to him, he refused invitations to meals and continued to talk about his dreams, and gradually they came to trust him and cooperate with him, thinking, "Dr. Kamata is serious." Now, the hospital has become so popular that young doctors from all over the country flock to it.
His mother's early death from heart disease was what inspired him to become a doctor. In his third year of high school, he told his father that he wanted to go to medical school, but he had a big fight with him, saying, "Poor people should work." In the end, he was forgiven, but he was also told, "Don't forget how poor people feel when they go to the doctor." Even now, at age 76, he says he still remembers the sight of his father working hard to pay for his mother's medical expenses.
