As with all the best history stories, there is often a degree of variance regarding who gets the gold medal for the invention. It's often easy to determine the "iffy" versions from the more accurate ones. Still, with massage chair history, various patented versions dating back to 1927 through the 1930s that commercially probably never saw the light of day. All of these versions started life in the USA. The illustrations in the patent documents below make for a fascinating read for the technical aficionado!
However, we will leave it to you, dear reader, to determine which one is the more accurate. We are happy to say that it is likely to be a bit of both, although there are certainly five or six years separating the two versions.
History of Massage Chairs
Once upon a massage chair...
The Little Girl Version
It appears (and certainly makes for a more heart-wrenching story!) that the first robotic chair was dreamed up back in 1945 by Niichi Kawahara of Japan. After five years of experimentation, he came out with the first working model in 1950.
Niichi's youngest daughter, Kazumi, suffered severely from Myofascial pain syndrome in her shoulder muscles or, in layman's terms, "knotty" shoulders. Daily, Niichi and his wife used to massage their daughter's shoulders in a concerted effort to relieve her pain. They then had a "lightbulb moment" and created an automation that Kazumi could use herself when her parents were at work.
Kawahara was a factory manager specialising in sewing machine parts. His first model was inspired by the technology he had gained through his employment. It mattered not that the chair's design couldn't have been any more basic, vertical and somewhat uncomfortable without any cushioning, not least it was handmade of floorboards. His automation managed to home in on the exact trigger points causing Kazumi so much pain, and she was able, for the first time, to leave the house and play with friends.
Please check out this wonderfully old video of Kazumi speaking about her father's quest to ease her suffering and see the invention still in use today!
Bathhouses have been around since Roman times in one form or another, and they have been very popular for hundreds of years in Japan. During the early 1950s, the owner of a very popular Japanese bathhouse, Mr Tomoyuki Nakae, came across Niichi's invention and viewed it as what could turn out to be a very profitable addition to his income insofar that his clients often came to his bathhouse not just for steam treatments, but for massages. As he did not have enough masseuses to cope with the demand, Mr Nakae added these units in the bathhouse and allowed each bather a three-minute session.Nakae was also an amateur inventor and teamed up with Niichi to produce a more efficient version and even one that was coin-operated. These eventually found their way into hundreds of bathhouses all over the country.
Hover over image to view
Nobuo Fujimoto
So, to add further mystery to who actually invented the modern Massage Chair, we have to bring Nobuo Fujimoto of Osaka into the frame. Both versions are suspiciously similar insofar that Nobuo worked in the public baths in Japan, and he apparently also wished to devise a mechanical way to massage his clients. We are no less convinced that Mr Fujimoto may have also been the inventor or joint inventor.
While Niichi Kawahara's chair was initially made of wooden planks, Fujimoto's first attempts at the design were cobbled together from pieces of scrap waste, including baseballs as the chairs' back-rollers, chairs from motorbikes and pedal cycles, and also planks of wood. The chairs became popular in holiday resorts but took many further versions before becoming popular home appliances. It may surprise you that it is estimated that some 15%-20% of homes in Japan own a massage chair! Mr Fujimoto founded the Japanese Massage chair factory, Fujiiryoki, which is an excellent manufacturer today.
Patents
"Roland A. Laabe" filed a US patent in 1948 for a not dissimilar, basic-looking chair to Kawahara's original design, with the novelty of having a vibrating implement attached to it. Looking at the original patent designs, one is more likely to want to compare it aesthetically to a torture rack more suited to a cell in The Tower of London than anything remotely attributable to a machine for the gentle relief of back pain!
The Fujiiryoki story
If you would like to learn more about the history of massage chairs we highly recommend you visit our Massage Chair Timeline. You will be taken through the history of Fujiiryoki from the worlds first massage chair to current day chairs.
View Timeline
