Shiatsudo Blog

The early 1900s saw the introduction of the word Shiatsu. Tamai Tempaku was possibly the first person to use the term “Shiatsu” when he published a book called Shiatsu Ho (translated as Finger-pressure therapy). He is credited with trying to amalgamate western anatomy and physiology and traditional Anma and other healing arts into a cohesive system.

Tempaku laid the foundation for his student, Tokujiro Namikoshi, to really bring Shiatsu out of the sidelines and get it officially recognised by Japan. Namikoshi stopped using the older TCM based concepts and embraced a western approach to describe the structure and function of the body. It is not clear whether dropping the TCM concepts was simply a shrewd political move by Namikoshi or if he really believed the concepts to be outdated. Either way, he brought Shiatsu into the public eye and set up one of the first Shiatsu colleges called the Japan Shiatsu College

At last, we reach Shizuto Masunaga. The man who formulated Zen Shiatsu. Masunaga was a western trained psychologist, and after graduating from the Japan Shiatsu College, he re-introduced older Chinese Medicine theories into his Shiatsu, while still keeping western anatomy and physiology in the syllabus. He expanded the classical meridians, proposing extension for all the major meridians, allowing the therapist to treat any meridian through the whole body (head, torso and all 4 limbs). Zen Shiatsu is typified by its use of 2 handed connection, movement from the Hara and perpendicular pressure to tonify kyo and sedate jitsu through the entire length of the meridian, not just at the acupuncture points.

Masunaga released a great book in the 1970s on Shiatsu called Zen Shiatsu How to Harmonize Yin and Yang for Better Health, that really should be required reading for all Zen Shiatsu students.

And that’s about where we are. Zen Shiatsu has spread to the west and is probably the most predominant style practiced in the UK today. With its amalgamation of massage, acupuncture points, TCM theory and western anatomy and physiology, it presents a fascinating framework for therapists to start working from.

Zen Shiatsu as currently practiced in the UK is a fairly recent therapy. The theory and structure of Zen Shiatsu was consolidated by a man named Shizuto Masunaga in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but, as most writing on the subject likes to point out, shiatsu traces its roots back to earlier forms of massage.

Obviously, any body of knowledge developed over time draws on its ancestors, and for shiatsu, these could be considered Teate and Tuina/Anma. Teate is reputedly the blanket term for hands-on massage indigenous to Japan, and means “placing the hands”. Around the 6th Century AD, commercial trade began between China and Japan, and with it, cultural exchange took place. China already had a comprehensively developed medical system in the form of acupuncture and Anma/Tuina (massage) which were amalgamated into Japanese culture. The Anma/Tuina would have been absorbed and changed and some sources claim that around the 10th Century AD, a form of massage that we would recognise as Shiatsu was being practiced (though it would have to wait until the 20th Century to be given the name Shiatsu).

For a while, massage flourished as a therapy and a profession, to the point that around 300 years ago, Anma was required study for doctors in Japan, helping them get to grips with the structure, energy flow and acupuncture points of the body. But, over time, it lost its medical pedigree, and with the introduction and influence of European medicine, became relegated mostly to treating only muscular tension.

Here’s a nice calligraphy version of simplified yin and yang characters, made with the online Chinese calligraphy tool. Of course, now you have to learn Chinese

Ok, you got me, I cheated and used the online dictionary.