Of the four names under which Japanese facial massage now circulates on North American and European spa menus — Kobido, Hadado, Korugi and Tenshido — only one rests on a documented lineage. Kobido's school dates its founding to 1472 in Shimizu, in present-day Shizuoka, and counts a 26th-generation grandmaster (House of Kobido, Heritage). The other three are practitioner terms of recent coinage and much thinner documentation. That asymmetry is the most useful fact available to anyone comparing them.
Japanese facial massage is a category of manual face treatments that combine three mechanics — lymphatic drainage strokes, acupressure on the face's tsubo points, and rapid percussive kneading — to move retained fluid, stimulate circulation and firm the features without instruments or injections. The category is wider than the four names above: practitioner literature also lists Tsuboki, Asahi and Tanaka methods, among others (Traditional Bodywork, Japanese face massage overview). But these four are the ones a client is most likely to meet, and the differences between them are concrete enough to set out plainly.
Kobido: the one with a documented lineage
Kobido — usually translated as “ancient way of beauty” — traces itself to 1472, when, by the school's own account, two of the era's finest Anma masters met in competition south of Mount Fuji, in Suruga province — present-day Shizuoka. The contest of kyoku-te, a percussive folded-hand technique, ended with the two joining forces to found a house with 48 facial techniques distinct from general Anma bodywork (Macuili, History of Kobido). The lineage is held today by Dr. Shogo Mochizuki, who began studying the discipline in 1977 under Master Ito, the 25th-generation grandmaster, and was appointed his successor in 2005 (House of Kobido, Heritage).
Two caveats belong next to that history. The 1472 date and the 26-generation count are documented by the lineage itself, not by independent historians; English-language scholarship on pre-Edo facial massage is thin. And Kobido is also a registered trademark of Mochizuki's school, which means much of what is sold under the name in Europe and North America is Kobido-inspired rather than lineage-certified. In practice, the style is fast, light and rhythmic: percussive kneading over skin and superficial muscle, alternating with drainage strokes and acupressure. The maison's full explainer — history, session structure, what the technique does and does not claim — is in the deep-dive on the Kobido method.
What is the difference between Kobido and Hadado?
Kobido is the classical, rhythm-driven technique: fast, light, percussive work on skin and superficial muscle, taught through a named lineage since the fifteenth century. Hadado is a recent practitioner term — often marketed as “Kobido 2.0” — for slower, deeper work on muscle, fascia and fat pads. Kobido stimulates; Hadado sculpts. Only Kobido has a documented history.
The name Hadado barely predates the 2020s in searchable sources, and what documentation exists is practitioner marketing rather than history. What those practitioners describe is nonetheless consistent. Where Kobido works through rhythm and stimulation at the surface — circulation, energy flow, an immediate visible wake-up — Hadado slows down and works the deeper structures: muscle bellies, fascia and the fat compartments that define facial contour (Orientana, Hadado massage overview). Therapists trained in both frame the distinction by goal: Kobido for a quick lifting effect and radiance, Hadado for asymmetries, jaw tension and longer-term contour work (Agnes Beauty Wellness, Hadado vs Kobido). Spa menus frequently pair Hadado with buccal — inside-the-mouth — massage, and the name appears with a trademark symbol in several markets. Like Kobido, it is a protected commercial name, not a public tradition.
Korugi: pressure on the bone
Korugi is the outlier of the family, and the style whose claims require the most careful handling. Developed by the Japanese therapist Chiyo Hayashi, it works neither on skin nor primarily on muscle but along the bones: firm, sustained pressure along the cheekbones, jawline and skull, on the theory that facial bones drift with age and can be encouraged back toward their original position (Estet-Portal, Korugi massage). The same practitioner literature describes the effect as strong enough that sessions are recommended no more than once a week.
The theory should be stated plainly: no peer-reviewed trial shows that manual pressure repositions adult facial bone. What a Korugi session demonstrably does is what any deep facial work does — move retained fluid, increase local blood flow, and ease tension in the jaw muscles, which can visibly soften a clenched jawline; practitioner guides note the work involves firm friction across the face (A World of Spa, the seven steps of Korugi). The distinction matters because Korugi is genuinely intense; the pressure is closer to osteopathic work than to a facial. Anyone with jaw-joint problems, recent dental work or reactive skin should mention the technique to a clinician before booking — not out of alarm, but because deep sustained pressure is a different category of intervention than a drainage stroke.
Tenshido: a name the record barely holds
Tenshido is the least documented of the four, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise. The term scarcely appears in English- or French-language sources: no named founder, no dated origin, no published curriculum. The closest documented practice is Ten Ki Do®, a trademarked method of the French practitioner Viviane Lemonnier that combines Dr. Mochizuki's Kobido with facial methods by Hidemi Morimasa and cold cupping, framed in energetic terms — rebalancing the flow of ki, the vital energy of East Asian medicine (Viviane Lemonnier, Ten Ki Do).
Where Tenshido does appear on a menu, it usually labels an energy-focused variant of Kobido: the same drainage and percussion, with more meridian acupressure and a slower close. The practical advice is to treat the word as a label to query rather than a lineage to trust. Ask the therapist what protocol they trained in, and with whom. A serious practitioner answers that question precisely; a vague answer is itself information.
The four styles, compared
| Style | Documented origin | Core technique | Intensity | Session focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kobido | 1472, Suruga (house-documented); lineage held by Dr. Shogo Mochizuki | Rapid percussive kneading, drainage, acupressure | Light to moderate, fast rhythm | Immediate radiance, tone, circulation |
| Hadado | Late-2010s practitioner term (“Kobido 2.0”); trademarked, no lineage documentation | Slow, deep work on muscle, fascia and fat pads | Moderate to deep, slow | Contour, asymmetry, jaw tension |
| Korugi | Late 20th century, attributed to Chiyo Hayashi | Sustained pressure along facial bones | Deep, at times uncomfortable | Contour; bone-position claims unproven |
| Tenshido | Undocumented; closest named cousin is Ten Ki Do® (France) | Kobido-derived drainage plus meridian acupressure | Light | Energetic framing, relaxation |
What the clinical evidence actually supports
None of the four styles has been tested in a controlled trial under its own name. What has been tested is facial massage generically, and the results draw a modest, consistent picture.
- Circulation. A 2018 study in Complementary Therapies in Medicine found that five minutes of facial roller massage increased skin blood flow in the massaged cheek by up to about 25 per cent, with the effect persisting more than ten minutes; five weeks of daily use improved the vasodilatory response to heat, consistent with improved vascular reactivity (Miyaji et al., PubMed, 2018).
- Mood. A 2008 trial of a 45-minute facial massage in 32 healthy women recorded significant reductions in anxiety scores and negative mood on standardized inventories (Hatayama et al., Biomedical Research, 2008).
- Relaxation, with honest limits. A 2023 randomized crossover trial found that even a three-minute facial massage increased self-reported relaxation and comfort — but the physiological stress markers measured, including salivary alpha-amylase, did not differ from rest (Journal of International Nursing Research, 2023).
Dermatology has begun to review the field as a whole — gua-sha, rollers and manual facial massage together (Hamp et al., Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 2023) — and the through-line is the same: short-term gains in circulation and de-puffing are measurable; durable lifting has not been demonstrated; nothing in the literature supports the repositioning of bone. That is not a dismissal. Reduced puffiness, softened muscle tension and a documented mood effect are precisely what most clients are buying, and they are real. What the evidence declines to underwrite is the surgical vocabulary — “natural facelift” — that marketing sometimes borrows.
Which Japanese facial massage style is right for you?
Choose Kobido for the classical rhythm-based session and its documented teaching standards; Hadado for slow, deep structural work on muscle and fascia; Korugi only if firm pressure suits you and its bone claims are understood as unproven; and treat Tenshido as a label to query, not a lineage. Morning puffiness responds to any of the lymphatic styles.
A second filter is temperament. Kobido's percussive rhythm is stimulating — the 2008 trial noted increased sympathetic activity alongside the drop in anxiety — while slower drainage-led work reads as sedative. A client who wants to leave a session alert should book differently from one who wants to fall asleep on the table. And in every case the practitioner matters more than the name: a well-trained therapist working under a loose label will outperform a poorly trained one holding a certificate.
Practicing at home, and what to practice with
The reason to learn a simplified version at home is the frequency problem: the clinical effects above are short-lived, which argues for a few minutes daily rather than ninety minutes quarterly. The maison's companion guide, a Kobido-inspired self-massage routine, translates the lineage's principles into movements that need no training partner.
The one material requirement is slip. Dry fingers drag and stretch the skin rather than working it; every lineage above works over a medium. A 100 per cent natural option is APHRODITE face and body oil (50 ml, $57.50), formulated in France for exactly this kind of slow manual work, alongside the rest of the skincare collection. The scented dimension is not incidental: in the maison's Aromaparfumerie® method, the aromatic profile of a formula is composed for its effect on state of mind — which is, as the trials above suggest, half of what a facial massage measurably delivers. Aimée de Mars formulates without phthalates, synthetic musks or ethanol of undocumented origin, a standard worth checking in any product that spends ten minutes being worked into the face rather than sprayed past it.
Sources
- House of Kobido, Heritage (lineage documentation)
- Macuili, History of Kobido
- Traditional Bodywork, Japanese face massage overview
- Orientana, Hadado massage overview
- Agnes Beauty Wellness, Hadado vs Kobido (practitioner comparison)
- Estet-Portal, Korugi massage
- A World of Spa, the seven steps of Korugi
- Viviane Lemonnier, Ten Ki Do
- Miyaji et al., Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2018 (PubMed)
- Hatayama et al., Biomedical Research, 2008 (PubMed)
- Randomized crossover trial of facial massage, Journal of International Nursing Research, 2023
- Hamp et al., Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 2023 (PubMed)
