1987 Volume 95 Issue 4 Pages 433-441
The physique and physical fitness of the urban and the mountainous rural schoolchildren were compared. The subjects were elementary schoolchildren aged from 9.2 to 12.8 years. The urban samples were 154 boys and 163 girls in an elementary school located at Meguro-ku in central Tokyo. The rural samples were 94 boys and 92 girls from 8 elementary schools in Shiiba village in the Miyazaki Prefecture.
The results obtained are as follows:
1) There were no great differences between the urban and the rural children in physique, but the skinfolds of the rural children were smaller than those of the urban group.
2) As for physical fitness, the rural children were superior to the urban children in endurance ability and agility, but the urban children were superior in muscular power.
3) The greater difference of physique and physical fitness between the regions were found in females as compared with males by the principal component analysis. The urban girls were inferior to the other groups in physical fitness in spite of the largest body size among the groups.
The Journal of the Anthropological Society of Tokyo
