Japanese Health Beliefs and Practices
Japanese Health Beliefs and Practices
Kristin Santiago
Cal State University, Dominguez Hills
School of Nursing
Concepts of Professional Nursing Practice
BSN 306, Section18
Caole A. Shea, PhD, RN, FAAN
Novemeber 4, 2012
Japanese Health Beliefs and Practices As the Japanese began migrating to the United States in 1885, throughout the decades, the cultural integration and assimilation of the western culture has been embedded into the Japanese Americans. Early traditional Japanese immigrants are called Issei and the second-generation Japanese Americans who were born and educated in the U.S. are called Nisei (Lipson & Dibble, 2008). Health beliefs and practices vary among the different generation of the Japanese, however, many of their viewpoints and attitudes are rooted from their Japanese background. To better care for Japanese elders effectively, it is significant that health care providers have knowledge regarding “historical experiences of the cohort of elders” and traditional Japanese beliefs and practices (Tanabe, 1990). This paper will discuss the influence of culture on the way a father of a Nisei Japanese individual’s experiences and how they cope and manage an acute myocardial infarction. The parents of a second-generation Nisei arrived into the U.S. on vacation in visiting their two children, son and daughter, living in Southern California. The parents were on vacation here for two months. The father was 72 years old and the mother 70 years of age. I interviewed the only son of the parents because the elder Japanese parents spoke very little English. During the end of their first month of vacation in the U.S., the father, father Aoyagi, began developing symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, weakness, increasing feelings of anxiety from time to time, and indigestion. At first, father Aoyagi related the symptoms to not being in his own home environment in Japan, California pollution and the way Japanese Americans prepare their food was too salty. Father
Kristin Santiago
Cal State University, Dominguez Hills
School of Nursing
Concepts of Professional Nursing Practice
BSN 306, Section18
Caole A. Shea, PhD, RN, FAAN
Novemeber 4, 2012
Japanese Health Beliefs and Practices As the Japanese began migrating to the United States in 1885, throughout the decades, the cultural integration and assimilation of the western culture has been embedded into the Japanese Americans. Early traditional Japanese immigrants are called Issei and the second-generation Japanese Americans who were born and educated in the U.S. are called Nisei (Lipson & Dibble, 2008). Health beliefs and practices vary among the different generation of the Japanese, however, many of their viewpoints and attitudes are rooted from their Japanese background. To better care for Japanese elders effectively, it is significant that health care providers have knowledge regarding “historical experiences of the cohort of elders” and traditional Japanese beliefs and practices (Tanabe, 1990). This paper will discuss the influence of culture on the way a father of a Nisei Japanese individual’s experiences and how they cope and manage an acute myocardial infarction. The parents of a second-generation Nisei arrived into the U.S. on vacation in visiting their two children, son and daughter, living in Southern California. The parents were on vacation here for two months. The father was 72 years old and the mother 70 years of age. I interviewed the only son of the parents because the elder Japanese parents spoke very little English. During the end of their first month of vacation in the U.S., the father, father Aoyagi, began developing symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, weakness, increasing feelings of anxiety from time to time, and indigestion. At first, father Aoyagi related the symptoms to not being in his own home environment in Japan, California pollution and the way Japanese Americans prepare their food was too salty. Father
References: Galanti, G. (2008). Traditional medicine: Practices and perspectives. Caring for patients from different cultures. (4 ed., pp. 24-25). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lipson, J. G. & Dibble, S. L. (Eds.). (2005). Culture and clinical care. San Francisco, CA: UCSF Nursing Press. Tanabe, M., K., (1990). Health and health care of Japanese American elders. Retrieved from http://www.stanford.edu/group/ethnoger/japanese.html Wilcox, L., (2008)