The Hundred-Year Journey
A method born in Kyoto in 1950 was systematised in Germany, turned into an industry by a Soviet state decision, and came back to Japan as an import. This is the documented lineage.
1950
Nakatani discovers Ryodoraku in Kyoto
1989
USSR Council of Ministers Decision No. 211
32
Annual international conferences since 1995
287
Members of the Japanese society (2025)
A note on how this page is written. Sources were taken from primary documents wherever possible — government publications, ministerial orders, patents, company records. Where a claim rests on a third-party account, that is stated. Where a document does not give its own year of publication, that is stated too. This page does not argue that the method described works or does not work. It records who placed it where, and when.
Seven Points on a Hundred-Year Line
Each of these is documented. Connected, they form a single line running from a Moscow laboratory in 1923, through a Kyoto clinic in 1950, to a parliamentary publication in 2015.
1923
Moscow
Gurwitsch reports 'mitogenetic radiation'
Alexander Gurwitsch (1874–1954), born into a Jewish family in Poltava, reported an ultra-weak ultraviolet emission from living tissue — detected not by instruments, which could not yet reach it, but by biological detectors: onion roots and yeast. Over a thousand papers followed. He received the Stalin Prize in 1941. In 1948, during the campaign against 'cosmopolitanism', he was expelled from the institute he had founded and lost his position. His student Gleb Frank carried the line forward into what is now called biophotonics.
1950
Kyoto
Nakatani discovers Ryodoraku
Measuring skin electrical resistance in a patient with kidney-related edema, the physician Yoshio Nakatani (1923–1978) found a line of unusually high conductivity that matched the kidney meridian described in classical acupuncture texts. He named it ryodoraku — 'the line that conducts well.' In 1954 he entered the physiology department at Kyoto University; in 1957, under Professor Kugo Sasagawa, he submitted 'Skin Electrical Resistance and Ryodoraku' and received his doctorate in medicine. He later lectured at Osaka Medical College.
1957
Moscow / Beijing
The USSR sends professors to China to learn acupuncture
In the mid-1950s five professors — Rusetsky, Vogralik, Tykochinskaya, Usova, Osipova — were sent to China for two years to study acupuncture and moxibustion. In 1957 the USSR Ministry of Health officially recognised the method, and the returning professors began teaching it as a new subject in departments of physiotherapy and neurology. In 1959, Ministry of Health Order No. 106 set out the indications and contraindications for its use. The meridian points were now inside the state system.
1968
Germany
Voll systematises electroacupuncture
Reinhold Voll (1909–1989), born in Berlin, turned from architecture to medicine and graduated at Tübingen in 1941. From the late 1940s he combined electrical measurement with acupuncture points; by 1968 the method known as EAV was codified. In 1978, Morell and Rasche developed MORA therapy in the same tradition.
1989
USSR
Decision No. 211 — the state orders the machines built
On 6 June 1989 a decision of the State Commission of the USSR Council of Ministers (No. 211) set the task of 'creating and introducing express-diagnostic devices for the state of the human organism, and equipping medical institutions with simple and effective diagnostic means.' This was not a permission to practise. It was a state assignment to build. Three years later two companies were founded in Moscow, three months apart.
1992
Zelenograd, Moscow
The first devices were built on Nakatani's method
Sergey Konoplyov, a 1984 graduate of the radio engineering faculty of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, began developing medical devices. The manufacturer's own official history states it plainly: 'The first devices were based on the Nakatani method and allowed general diagnosis of the state of the organism. Later, devices working by the method of the German physician R. Voll were developed.' A patent filed by Konoplyov and his sister in June 1999 refers in its text to 'the Nakatani-Ryodoraku method' — the Japanese word in Latin script, inside a Russian patent document.
2015
State Duma, Moscow
A Japanese name appears in a Russian parliamentary publication
The State Duma of the Russian Federation published 'Complementary Medicine: the state and prospects of legal regulation' (Moscow, 2015, 80 pp.), a collection by members of the Expert Council on complementary medicine legislation of its Health Protection Committee. In the text, the best-known hardware methods are listed as 'electropuncture diagnostics by the methods of R. Voll, I. Nakatani, K. Akabane.' The same publication also states that traditional medicine in Russia has been left 'in a semi-legal position' and lacks a legal basis — the reason the document was produced at all.
Why Russia Could Receive It
The techniques arrived from outside. The capacity to receive them had been built at home, over three centuries, in three layers.
The indigenous layer — three centuries
Russia has Buddhist regions of its own. From the 17th century, Tibetan medicine was taught as one of the ten classical Buddhist sciences in the medical faculties of Buryat monastery-universities. In the 1860s the lamas of Aginsky datsan replaced imported medicinal materials with plants of Transbaikalia and translated the Four Tantras from Tibetan into Mongolian. Pyotr Badmaev (1851–1920) was personal physician to Alexander III and Nicholas II, and the first to render the Four Tantras into Russian. When the monasteries were closed in the 1930s, surviving scholar-lamas passed their knowledge to the staff of the Buryat Scientific Centre. In 1993 the medical school at Aginsky reopened.
The import layer — the 1950s
Acupuncture entered Soviet state medicine through Sino-Soviet cooperation. Once the meridian points were taught in university departments and governed by a ministerial order, a foundation existed on which electrical measurement could later be placed.
The measurement layer — from abroad
Ryodoraku from Japan (1950). EAV from Germany (1968). MORA from Germany (1978). The techniques came from outside. What Russia had built at home, over three centuries, was the vessel that could receive them.
Reading the Numbers Honestly
It is often said that there is no data in this field. That is not quite accurate — a Russian ministerial document published figures from a study of more than five hundred patients. But the figures require careful reading, and the document itself is careful about what it claims.
What the document reports
A methodological recommendation issued by the Research Institute of Traditional Methods of Treatment under the Russian Ministry of Health (document No. 98/232; the year of issue is not stated in the document itself — the numbering convention suggests around 1998) reports a blind controlled study carried out from 1993 at a clinical hospital. The conclusions of electropuncture examination on more than 500 patients were compared against clinical diagnoses established by contemporary diagnostic methods. Overall: sensitivity 74.8%, specificity 33.5%, overall accuracy 63.6%.
Why 'accuracy 63.6%' cannot be read as screening performance
Overall accuracy is a weighted average of sensitivity and specificity, weighted by prevalence: accuracy = sensitivity × prevalence + specificity × (1 − prevalence). Solving for prevalence from the published figures gives 72.9% overall — and 98.6% for the nervous system, 98.0% for the endocrine system. The study was conducted in a clinical hospital; almost everyone examined had already been diagnosed with something. With so few healthy subjects, the low specificity barely moves the overall figure, and accuracy is pulled toward sensitivity. In a population that was half healthy, the same sensitivity and specificity would give an overall accuracy of 54.1%, not 63.6%.
What the document itself concludes
The recommendation does not hide the low specificity. It publishes it, and limits the use accordingly: the method 'should be applied for functional integral assessment of the organism, with subsequent confirmation of the electropuncture conclusions by direct methods of examination.' Elsewhere it instructs the operator that when a result appears to correspond to a clinical diagnosis, 'the recommendation must indicate the direct methods necessary to confirm the diagnosis.' In the document's own terms, 'direct methods' means the reference standard — the set of contemporary diagnostic methods used to establish a clinical diagnosis. The document names none of them specifically.
The honest summary: in a hospital population, against established diagnoses, the method picked up 74.8% of those already known to be ill, and was weak at identifying the healthy as healthy. The document calls it a screening instrument and says so plainly. Taking the accuracy figure out of that context and presenting it as general diagnostic performance would misrepresent what was measured.
The Question This Leaves
The same finding, placed inside the institutions of one country and outside those of another.
Two countries, two placements
In Russia, reflexotherapy exists as a recognised medical specialty in the Ministry of Health's nomenclature. State medical universities run retraining courses. Dissertations carry official discipline codes. A peer-reviewed journal on the state accreditation list publishes in the field. An international conference has run annually since 1995. In Japan, the method that began it is maintained by a learned society of 287 members.
The society still exists
The Japanese Society of Ryodoraku Medicine was founded in 1960 and unified with a parallel society in August 2002. Its secretariat sits inside a university. It runs a certification system, holds academic meetings, and is registered with the national academic network. Most of its 287 members are physicians and acupuncturists. The lineage is documented, and it is Japanese.
The question this leaves
Born in Japan. Systematised in Germany. Made into an industry in Russia, where a decision of the Council of Ministers ordered the machines built and a parliamentary publication later printed the Japanese name beside the German one. Then imported back to Japan as a Russian or German product. The question this history raises is not whether the method works. It is why the same finding was placed inside the institutions of one country and outside those of another.
For the device categories, regulatory status by country, and evidence assessment, see our companion article:
Wave & Frequency Devices →Sources
Where a document does not state its own year of publication, that is noted rather than estimated silently.
- State Duma of the Russian Federation, «Комплементарная медицина: состояние и перспективы правового регулирования», Moscow, 2015, 80 pp. (year stated on the imprint)
- Methodological Recommendation No. 98/232, Research Institute of Traditional Methods of Treatment, Ministry of Health of Russia (year of issue not stated in the document; c. 1998 inferred from the numbering convention; the study is stated in the text as beginning in 1993)
- Patent RU2164424C1, «Способ низкочастотной электромагнитной терапии и устройство для его осуществления», inventors S. P. Konoplyov and T. P. Konoplyova, filing and priority date 28 June 1999
- Official company history of the Russian manufacturer, archived 28 September 2011 (Internet Archive)
- USSR Council of Ministers State Commission Decision No. 211 of 6 June 1989 (cited in the parliamentary publication above)
- Ministry of Health and Medical Industry of the Russian Federation, Order No. 270 of 1 July 1996
- USSR Ministry of Health Order No. 106 (1959), on indications and contraindications for acupuncture and moxibustion
- Japanese Society of Ryodoraku Medicine — founded 1960; unified August 2002; 287 members as of 2025
- Nakatani Yoshio (1923–1978), doctorate in medicine, Kyoto University, 1957: 'Skin Electrical Resistance and Ryodoraku'
- A. G. Gurwitsch (1874–1954): Stalin Prize 1941; removed from his institute in 1948
- Russian academic literature on the integration of zhen-jiu therapy into Soviet state medicine, 1950s–1970s