Changes in physique and obesity of school children in an elementary school observed from the Meiji era to the Showa era

Data on height and weight were collected at an elementary school in Fukui Prefecture from 1889 through 1934 (observation period). During the observation period, the school area, consisting of a mountainous region and a plain region, was not changed. Using these data, analysis showed that there were: (1) differences in physique between children from the mountainous region and those from the plain region, which was suggested by the school teachers during the observation period, (2) chronological changes in physique, (3) chronological changes in the features of the height velocity curve in the analysis when school children at the same school born in the 1980s were used as a control, (4) chronological changes in the balance of weight to height and (5) changes in the prevalence of obesity.The results were as follows:(1) during the observation period, the physiques of children in the mountainous region were consistently inferior to those in the plain region, (2) during the period, the average physique of the school children aged 12 was consistently inferior to the overall average for Japanese pupils of the same age, (3) during the observation period, the onset of the adolescent growth spurt was later by one year compared with that of current controls, (4) the ratio of weight to height stratified by 3cm intervals during the observation period was almost the same as that in current controls, (5) during the observation period, the prevalence of obesity in boys (6%) was lower than that in current controls (10%). However, the obesity prevalence in girls during the period was higher than that in the controls. However, this findings might be associated with wearing kimono during measurement.By contrast, these differences have recently disappeared. These results suggest that there were consistent differences in physique that persisted between regions in the school area and in Japan as a whole across several eras.