We took an extensive overview of the history of breastfeeding in Japan. Japanese people, especially farming villagers have lived with a mixed religious atmosphere including primitive religion, Shintoism and Buddhism during more than 1, years. In such circumstances, they had three kinds of traditional practices for inadequate breast milk production, that is, praying to God or Buddha, foods or medicines based on their experiences and wet nursing. Farm villagers used to primarily feed their babies by their own breasts and some who couldn't supply adequate milk, compensated with their neighbor's milk until a century ago, because most villagers' wives had plenty of milk at that time.

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EATING FOR TWO
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TOKYO (1 p.m.)
For most infants and mothers, breastfeeding not only provides optimal health benefits for infants and their mothers, it also promotes the development of a close relationship between mothers and their infants. Most Japanese pregnant women want to initiate breastfeeding for their baby, and Studies have shown repeated disharmonic interaction between problematic breastfeeders and mothers, with significantly high comorbid postpartum depression 2,3,4. If a newborn baby is unable to latch on, sleeps without sucking and continues crying for several weeks to a few months, the mother may suffer from a sense of guilt and doubt her own ability as a mother. In other countries, early interventions with the Newborn Behavioral Observations NBO system have been conducted with neonates and their families to help parents recognize and understand the individual behaviors of their infant Such interventions can promote stable interaction between parent and child and increase parental confidence 6, 7,8, 9. Based on the assumption that the NBO could provide the same benefits for Japanese first-time breastfeeding mothers who were experiencing breastfeeding problems, the author developed a unique nursing home visiting intervention program that included fathers and mothers in the NBO program. In Japan, it is customary that a mother return to her parents' house for the first month after delivery. The presence of fathers or other important significant others , however, is important to the development of a healthy maternal-infant relationship.
She recalls one of the first years she sat on a committee sponsored by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to help foreign mothers and fathers who were about to have babies in Japan. The Japanese who were there were shocked because children here are raised on sushi. Kids eat it all the time. I, too, had gobs of it while I was pregnant. The conclusion Oxley reached is that opinions where food is concerned vary so widely that a well-informed mother is best equipped to be her own judge.