Can “Sanpaku Eyes” Determine Your Fate?

Besides tragically early demises, what do James Dean, Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy have in common? They all had “sanpaku eyes.” Coincidence?

Not according to a Japanese superstition. The Japanese term “sanpaku” translates loosely to “three white eyes” and refers to the human eye and the visibility of the whites of the eye on three sides surrounding the iris.

Superstition has it that this condition appears in people who are doomed in some way to suffer an evil fate or early demise.

There are two types of sanpaku. The first is where the white part of the eye is visible surrounding the bottom and sides of the iris. This type of sanpaku represents a physical imbalance that, according to believers, shows up in people who are drug addicts, sugar addicts or alcoholics; they’re said to attract accidents.

For people whose eyes are white on the top and sides of the iris, it’s believed to represent mental imbalance or those who have anger issues, murderous tendencies or psychosis; they attract violence.

George Oshawa, the author of the 1965 book You Are All Sanpaku, asserted that the condition was a physical and spiritual imbalance that, if not corrected, could result in people being “accident prone” or violent.

He explained further that sanpaku was a “warning, a sign from nature, that one’s life is threatened by an early and tragic end” but that the condition could be reversed by introducing a macrobiotic diet.

A macrobiotic diet is one that attempts to balance the body’s yin/yang energies, and many of its supporters claim that it can reverse cancer, although the American Cancer Association, among others, does not in any way support the diet.

Among the acceptable foods on a macrobiotic diet are brown rice and cereal grains, legumes and beans, miso soup, vegetables and other unprocessed foods. Practitioners can also eat fish and seafood, fruits, seeds and sweeteners a few times a week. Non-stimulating beverages are also allowed.

In the strictest version of a macrobiotic diet, only brown rice and water were allowed and, at best, even the expanded diet can still render its practitioners deficient in essential vitamins and minerals that the body needs to function properly and for the person to stay healthy (see “How To Prevent 8 Common Vitamin Deficiencies”).

In the end, it’s still a question as to whether the condition really has traction or if Oshawa was merely using it as leverage to sell his book on macrobiotic diets.

When you look at the deaths of the famous people noted above, the data is pretty compelling: James Dean died in a fiery car crash at the age of 24. Princess Diana was killed in a violent high-speed car chase when she was 36. Marilyn Monroe died of a purported drug overdose at 36. Martin Luther King Jr. was felled by an assassin’s bullet when he was 39, and John F. Kennedy was assassinated at age 46.

But also consider this before you run to the mirror to check your fate: John Lennon had sanpaku and also observed a strict macrobiotic diet in the last years of his life… a life that was cut short when, at 40 years of age, he was assassinated at his home in New York City as he and his wife, artist Yoko Ono, returned from a recording session.

Despite the high-profile cases of several tragic celebrities, there currently do not exist statistics of people who have visible whites around three sides of their eyes having died any earlier or in a more violent fashion than people without “sanpaku eyes.”