Katsusuke serizawa biography of donald

This regulation caused massages to lose much of their therapeutic and scientific approach. Their popularity disappeared as well. This ban included Anma.

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So, the Japanese people began to use Anma unofficially. Ina law recognized the professional figure who performed acupuncture because practitioners in the field of Japanese medicine became interested in Western practices. The law dropped the authorization needed to practice these treatments, which opened the gates for the development of Shiatsu.

Anma eventually became the Shiatsu massage therapy technique. Namikoshi continued to practice this massage type until police arrested him for practicing without a license. Inafter receiving formal training, Tokujiro earned his license at the suggestion of his brother—soon after, he opened a massage clinic. The difference between the Anma and Shiatsu techniques is that Shiatsu utilizes finger pressure only.

The style combined ancient Chinese medicine integrated with a scientific view. Anma massages use knees, fists, and elbows to apply pressure. From there, it began to spread everywhere in the world. Shiatsu is a whole-body treatment and requires extensive knowledge of the Musculoskeletal structure of the body and nervous system. This understanding emphasizes the neuromuscular points.

A student of Namikoshi, named Shizuto Masunaga, created something fantastic with Shiatsu. He was a Chinese medicine scholar and a psychologist. Among the great contemporary figures of Shiatsu, Tsuneo Kaneko sensei is one of the great promoters of Shiatsu and Anma, of which he is a graduate, and holds the title of Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

Trained by the greatest masters, including Dr. Katsusuke Serizawa, he has been practicing and teaching these two techniques for 50 years in California USA and before that in Japan. His first teachers were his parents because these techniques are above all a family tradition. With the numerous exchanges we had, I was able to discover a person of great philosophical and spiritual depth, aspects that I asked him to develop in this interview.

This interview is therefore not only a life story, but a true sharing of a life dedicated to care of his fellow humans being. Ivan Bel: Hello sensei.

Katsusuke serizawa biography of donald: After returning to Tokyo,

First of all, I would like to thank you for accepting to do this interview. I hope that all is well with you and your family in California, during this Covid epidemic. To begin with, could you tell me a little about your background? Where were you born?

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I was born right after the second world war, in Many of us in Tokyo lost homes and lived in poverty. We were baby-boomers that had to face a hard journey through higher education, jobs, and marriage?! We had tough competition to be on the winning side. Japan had a miraculous recovery and succeeded in rebuilding their families and the economy because everyone tried so hard to be prosperous and happy.

My father was very conservative and had severe discipline while my mother was sweet and gentle to us. I grew up in a home where other Anma apprentices lived with us. It seems that you are the second generation of a family of Anma practitioners. Does this mean that your parents were already doing this profession? My father practiced both acupuncture and Anma massage and my mother practiced Anma massage.

Both my parents had a limited education in their childhood because of the poverty in the countryside. Their teacher took care of them and they later started a business that grew well. After my parents married, Japan lost the war, and my father came home safely after the war. My parents worked hard and succeeded quickly in restarting the Anma and Acupuncture clinic they had lost during the war.

It was an amazing achievement and they extended the business when my brother and I were in junior-high katsusuke serizawa biography of donald. My parents gave me and my brother a loving and excellent education. And yourself, at what age did you start to take an interest in manual therapy? I liked the western culture, often watched TV and used to listen to popular music stations on the radio.

These programs from the US gave me a happy feeling. I was very open, naive and americanized. My parents and I maybe expected that I would be more successful in another field. But during college at one point I needed some income to go on a trip during the summer vacation. They trained me on how to practice a one-hour Anma form treatment. All I needed to learn was mastering the sequence and how to make my clients feel better based on my instinct without knowing the advanced theoretical background, which was a very effective way to learn healing.

I appreciate it now. Waichi Sugiyama [1] was a very successful, famous blind acupuncturist who published books and opened a school. He invented a Japanese-style needle- guiding tube, which makes the insertion of the needle painless and easier. His Anma teachings were continued over years but his particular style may have disintegrated now as there are no more schools teaching it today.

My father did not teach me other styles but I remember he mentioned Yoshida-Ryu[2] and he said that it uses strong elbow techniques and that it is sometimes very painful. It is some extra tissue fibre, fascia due to over stimulation. This is one of the reasons why Anma was denounced by Shiatsu specialists because Anma applies lots of these kneading techniques, more than pressure techniques.

I pay very careful attention when I teach and use these cross-fiber and rotating-fiber kneading techniques. What subjects did you study? First, I majored in a 3 year full time course at Toyo Shinkyu Senmon Gakko which included Anma massage, western massage, shiatsu, acupuncture and moxibustion. Their curriculum had more western medicine, anatomy, physiology, symptomatology, pathology, Western treatment, then Kanpo Traditional Japanese Medicine TCM, techniques, and traditional meridian therapy.

It is extremely important to understand the western point of view on sickness and health. We need to present ourselves to our patients and students as highly educated therapists in both western and eastern medicine. Additionally, I attended an internship with Dr. Nobuyasu Ishino, an obstetrician, to learn Japanese-style herbs. This is one of the best training methods and helped me to prepare for and to pass the national examination and to receive my license in Japan.

Secondly, I took a course for my Ph. I learned about auricular acupuncture, electro-acupuncture, therapeutic exercises, Chinese herbal principles and clinical applications for alcoholism and drug addiction, dermatology, gynecology, etc. This application of 9 kinds of needles helped me to understand how important it is to take care of both the skin surface and the tissues below the skin in Anma Therapy.

Those schools are famous, especially Toyo Shinkyu Gakko. Its founder was Sorei Yanagiya, I believe? Did you meet him? His wife was the chairman at the time and I met her. I was inspired to introduce Anma to the US as he had done in Europe. There is a famous story that he treated Pablo Picasso while on his trip to lecture about the science of acupuncture.

I learnt his teachings through his successful disciples who were teaching in the school. It was a fascinating period in Japan with my wife. I kept working for my parents, taking care of our newborn baby, Lisa, in addition to studying hard in school full- time. I did very well in every path and it was miraculous. I was also very interested in Western Science.

It is extremely important for me to integrate eastern and western medicine and I wanted to be able to explain the classic terms of eastern medicine in the western terms. Three years was not enough but I wanted to absorb the most out of my stay in Japan. I was always hungry to learn more. Gradually the two fused to produce a new kind of purely Japanese massage that combines the best of the two sysems.

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In addition to these, in Japan there is a fingertip massage method called shiatsu, by means of which one presses certian points on the body to improve circulation and to stimulate the nerves. Practitioners had to water down the traditional principles behind their practices and define their work in Western medical terms, in order to legitimize their therapies to the Powers that Be.

It is important at this stage to discuss the enormous contributions to the evolution of Shiatsu made by three Japanese individuals during the twentieth century. These men were:. Tokujiro Namikoshi discovered his system of Shiatsu through trial and error, as a growing boy on Hokkaido, a northern Japanese island his family moved to when he was very young The children took turns helping their mother as there was no doctor available.

Eventually her body healed itself. Later Tokujiro was to realize that by pressing on the muscles on either side of the middle region of her spine, he was stimulating the adrenal glands to produce cortisol, the cure for rheumatism! Tokujiro opened the Shiatsu Institute of Therapy on Hokkaido, inafter completing his studies of Anma and Western massage.

He left the school in Hokkaido under the supervision of some of his students in and went to Tokyo to form a Shiatsu school there. It took several years and the co-operation of others, but by he opened the Japan Shiatsu Institute in Tokyo. Two years after Shiatsu was legally approved as part of Anma, inthe school was legally licensed by the Minister of Health and Welfare, under the new name, the Japan Shiatsu School.

This School proved to be very successful. His style requires a thorough knowledge of the musculo-skeletal structure of the body, and the nervous system, emphasizing neuro-muscular points. In the latter part of the twentieth century Shizuto Masunaga brought Shiatsu back to its Eastern roots, emphasizing meridians and the Five Element theory.

He was a student of Western psychology and Chinese medicine, very interested in the spiritual, psychological and emotional aspects of individuals.