Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is based on informs the embodied and embodying practices of a group of Japanese men who have had expressed a firm intention to control body weight. Obesity and overweight have mostly rendered into a male’s issue or masculinised disease that equally involves the gendered self of women—mothers and wives—who are to support, encourage and monitor men’s attempts to regain control of the body. The Japanese case deserves international attention. Japan is one of the few countries in the world where health policies on obesity and overweight have been largely grounded in the construct of ‘metabolic syndrome’, which mostly revolves around the understanding that the accumulation of visceral fat represents the real risk to health. The Japanese platform is different because metabolic syndrome has been classified as one of the so-called lifestyle-related disease.