Masunaga said that Shiatsu was "therapy of love", that's ai no teate in Japanese, and its practice is simple. The way into it is small, but inside it is vast. He was not only interested in effective cure in the medical sense, but something greater.
 
Shiatsu is about feeling and ki and connection, it's not like Tuina (Chinese massage therapy) or acupressure. While it is simple on one hand, human feeling is also deep and hard to catch.
The important thing is to feel first. Feeling is not Chinese medicine. This is Japanese.
Masunaga said that Acupuncture theory and charts are fine for Acupuncture and Moxibustion but not suitable for Shiatsu. In life, meridians are not fixed lines, they vary in every way. Every person and every situation is different.
There is no Anpuku (abdominal massage/"clearing the hara") in Chinese medicine. The relationship between Japanese Shiatsu and Chinese medicine is thin. They are not naturally linked. When any system of folk medicine is systematized in Japan, people go back to Chinese systems for structure, and, although it's undeniably an influence, it's not being used exactly, as many non-Japanese assume.
Kanpo (Japanes medicine) is intuitive medicine. You practice until you don't have to think about the points but they appear.
Meridians don't exist in the body like they do on the chart. Meridians are in life; they are the functions that appear when flow is stopped. It's the function that appears when you are becoming sick. It is necessary just to see the function as a fact, even if it's not provable in Western scientific terms. Shiatsu that puts theory first is strange; there is no theory in being alive or in life itself.
A child is born whether there is theory or not.
 
Shiatsu doesn't analyse in a scientific way because what we are interested in are lives and you can't categorize a life. If you make contact with the whole person then their whole character comes to you without analysis. It's dynamic and there's no judgement. It's essential to develop a good patient-practitioner relationship for therapy.
Shiatsu is therapy through life-sympathy. A person's personality and character are the differences in distortion of the mind/body. This distortion is what makes up a life.