- Ohsawa explained the concept:
In a healthy newborn child, the lower edge of the iris-the sphere of color at the center of the eye-rests below the lower eyelid like a rising sun. The eye has two white areas on either side of the iris. In the eyes of a dead man, the iris turns up into the skull. If it is visible at all it has three white sides. Sanpaku. As a man becomes old or ill, as he approaches death-whether he be seven years old or seventy-the colored portion of the eye-the iris-rises to disclose white between the lower lid and the iris.
The condition of sanpaku is a warning, a sign from nature, that one's life is threatened by an early and tragic end..." Oshawa pointed to individuals with sanpaku eyes that ranged from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln