The Nishi System is a methodology for the maintenance and recovery of good health that was first introduced in 1927 by Katsuzo Nishi, who at the time was the chief technical engineer for Japan’s first subway project, the Tokyo subway.
From childhood Nishi was weak of constitution, and realizing that the medical science of the day could not cure his ailments, he independently undertook in his late teens the study and practice of what would amount to some 360 types of folk cures and health methods, both ancient and contemporary, Oriental and Occidental. Adding to these his own theories about the dynamics of the human body based on the mechanical science he studied in his own specialty, civil engineering, he established the Nishi method of Health Optimization.
Here is what Katsudzo Nishi writes in his book:
"Sickly and weak since early childhood I was, when still a boy, given what was virtually a death sentence by a certain well-known physician: “This young fellow, I am sorry to say, will never reach the age of twenty.”
But today I am approaching the age that is three times twenty and this, be it noted, after having been actively engaged in engineering work for thirty long years and with stamina enough to have never missed a day’s work during the last twenty of these years.
This health, for which I am so grateful, however, did not come to me by chance. I had to struggle for it. But, leaving the story of that struggle to be told in another part of this book, I wish simply to state here that what I am today I owe to my original methods of health building-methods which are a precious outcome of years of careful study of nearly every theory of health and preventative medicine to be found in the world, of endless experimentation, from the standpoint of modern medical science, of the knowledge so acquired."