Opinion Bacteria Wars By SCOTT T. HARDS	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
バクテリア戦争 友達と一緒に自転車店に行った筆者は、抗菌ベルの存在を知ってびっくり。日本には抗菌グッズがあふれているが、筆者の目には奇妙に映る

Recently, I was with a friend when he visited a local store to buy a bicycle. He quickly picked out one that seemed to meet all his needs and as he was giving it a final check, he noticed that on the top of the bell there was a small sticker. Kokin it said in kanji: bacteria-resistant.

Gosh now, a bacteria-resistant bicycle bell — what will they think of next? The two of us joked about this sarcastically for a few minutes. "Now I can ride with confidence, knowing I'm not going to get one of those dreaded diseases that hundreds of people pick up every year from touching unsanitary bicycle bells," he said.

If you look around Japan these days, you can find any number of products that have this kokin label. Pens, combs, chairs, clothing — virtually anything that people touch is now being sold in a bacteria-resistant form. There are even ATMs that claim to sterilize the money before spitting it back out to you. With so many different items now being sold in this way, it's hard to write it off as a marketing gimmick. It would appear that kokin actually sells.

If you sit down to watch daytime television here, it won't be long before you're treated to a commercial employing the latest computer graphics to depict some wonderful new medicine or household cleaner vaporizing a bunch of digitally created bacteria. It seems that microorganisms have become public enemy No. 1 here in Japan.

The Japanese have always been more sensitive about germs than Westerners, it would appear. Witness those gauze masks that many folks wear when they have a cold and go out in public. You never see those outside of Japan.

But recently, this kokin thing seems to have escalated. No doubt the food poisoning problems caused by the O-157 bacteria over the past couple of years here have contributed to a change in attitude. While I think common-sense steps to prevent food contamination are important, I'm a bit worried about the social effects of bacteria paranoia. I hear about mothers who won't let their kids play in the sandbox in the park or people who walk around carrying little bottles of alcohol to sterilize things they have to touch. In extreme cases, people have been known to refuse handshakes or to wear gloves continuously in an attempt to avoid some perceived threat to their health.

After all, the kind of bacteria that float around and end up on items like pens, money and bicycle bells are going to enter our bodies through the normal breathing process anyway. The air itself is by far the biggest distributor of germs, and I doubt any Japanese marketer is going to come up with a way to make the entire atmosphere bacteria-resistant!

What's important is that people are taught that our bodies, if healthy, are more than capable of handling those germs. At any time, we play host to billions of benign, or even helpful, little bacteria in our digestive systems, so it's important that people realize that bacteria can be good for us, too.

Sometimes, they can be quite tasty, as well. After all, what would yogurt, cheese and natto makers do without the bacteria that help them create their products? Of course, if you want to start talking about threats to health, then mentioning natto around me would be a good way to get a conversation going.

Shukan ST: Oct. 9, 1998

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