"Live a happy life while giving happiness to others."

If you choose the right path, it will open up the world to you" was my elementary school song, and I still remember it 40 years later. Born and raised in Japan, I immigrated to Canada in 1979 and started practicing shiatsu in Toronto. Eventually, I began to spread knowledge of shiatsu to all parts of the world. As I reflect on this, I realize just how far the path I chose has taken me in my life.

Shiatsu-doh means "the way of shiatsu," and for me this therapudic art truly is a way of life - a path to physical and spiritual healing and, therefore,enhanced living. Thirty-five years have passed since I have had a therapudic massage from a professional practioner. I was then a teenager, and it was the first time I became aware of the natural healing power and the life force within me. That experience pointed me in a new direction, which eventually lead me to dedicate my life to shiatsu. I met and studied with Tokujiro Namikoshi, the father of shiatsu, and I was intrigued by his theory about hands-on-healing:" Pressing the human body stimulates the fountains of life." It is my goal to continue to follow closely the path shown to me by Tokujiro and his son Toru. Receiving shiatsu makes me healthy, and giving shiatsu also makes me healthy.. The teaching of shiatsu-doh is of great significance to me because I live a happy life while making others happy. As I continue to tarvel along this road, I am grateful for the support and insrtuction of all my patients, staff, colleages at home and abroad, and friends and family.

The manuscript upon which I based this book was first compiled by journalist Janice Mawhinney, who had written a story on me and shiatsu for the Toronto Star in 1995.A few years after the story appeared, we arranged for her to conduct a further series of interviews with me, and she organized them into a manuscript. For along time, it gathered dust, until one day last year I showed it to a patient of mine, Ross Oakes, who is the chaplain of a Catholic high school in Mississauga, Ontario, and who is very enthusiastic about shiatsu. Ross strongly encouraged me to publish it. Starting with the basic skeleton Janice had prepared, I began the time-consuming process of revising the manuscript to turn it into this book.