{"id":10317,"date":"2026-04-23T03:18:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T03:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/10317\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T03:18:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T03:18:54","slug":"dr-stretch-japans-kawasaki-studio-revolutionising-core-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/10317\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Stretch: Japan\u2019s Kawasaki studio revolutionising core balance"},"content":{"rendered":"

How a simple wellness idea turned into a health movement \u2013 and now an international franchise.<\/p>\n

There was once a time when Masahiro Kurokawa had to explain to everyone what a stretching studio did. To many in Japan, it seemed rather odd that people would pay for something that was potentially painful and could be done for free at home while sitting in front of the television. <\/p>\n

Kurokawa opened his first outpost of Dr Stretch in 2010 \u2013 a 40 sq m space with five beds in the Shinyurigaoka area of Kawasaki. Outside the world of professional sport, says Kurokawa, one-on-one stretching sessions with a trainer simply \u201cdidn\u2019t exist in Japan\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Workers<\/p>\n

\"Staff<\/p>\n

\"Posters<\/p>\n

Today, Kurokawa\u2019s Tokyo-based wellness company Nobitel runs a network of 240 Dr Stretch branches in Japan and 46 overseas \u2013 including in China, Singapore and the UAE. The company estimates that a million customers have had their limbs and joints tuned up by the brand\u2019s trainers; there are currently about 70,000 active members. This spring, Dr Stretch will enter the European market with a space in Amsterdam. The brand then hopes to expand further west. \u201cWhat I really want is to be in the US market,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

The idea for Dr Stretch came to Kurokawa in the late 2000s when his 11 year old son, a talented footballer, was sidelined as a result of knee pain. The entrepreneur took his son to see several orthopaedic doctors and chiropractors; all simply prescribed prolonged rest. Then, by chance, Kurokawa met a professional sports trainer who told the boy to try a series of stretches. \u201cMy son\u2019s pain went away and I immediately saw the potential for a broader audience,\u201d says Kurokawa. <\/p>\n

About the technique:
Dr Stretch\u2019s dash to market prominence might appear hasty \u2013 it opened 100 shops in the first five years \u2013 but the training of its staff takes time. Genki Yamaguchi, a former trainer for the Boston Red Sox, codeveloped the stretching regimen, which was inspired by the US baseball team\u2019s body-maintenance programme for athletes. Of the 2,500 trainers recruited, only 30 had achieved the \u201cGrand\u201d rank (the highest of the five) at the time of publication; this rank allows them to work on professional athletes. New trainers spend two months learning and are taught at least 70 stretching techniques. Quality control matters too: if staff are poorly reviewed, retraining is offered.<\/p>\n

The experience became the basis for his business strategy: to demonstrate that Dr Stretch\u2019s \u201ccore balance stretching\u201d method could improve top athletes\u2019 performance and offer a pared-down version to the general public. This approach allows the business to stand out in Japan\u2019s \u00a5700bn (\u20ac3.8bn) fitness industry, while offering customers a new way to address physical ailments beyond popular options such as massage or acupuncture. It is the biggest name in a fast-growing sector of Japan\u2019s fitness industry. The country has long had a wide array of treatment options for consumers\u2019 everyday ailments: massage, osteopathic, acupuncture, chiropractic and orthopaedic rehab clinics. \u201cDr Stretch has increasingly established itself as an alternative to those types of services,\u201d says Takenori Furuya, the editor in chief and publisher of Fitness Business, a Tokyo based bimonthly magazine. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dr Stretch\u2019s spaces are typically small and sparingly furnished, with between six to 15 beds. Trainers cater to clients from all walks of life, from J-pop musicians and primary school children to middle-aged office workers. \u201cIt can take three or four months before you see any noticeable improvements,\u201d says Kurokawa. \u201cWith any health related business, it\u2019s always the same: people have to feel the effect or they just won\u2019t stick with it.\u201d
doctorstretch.com<\/a><\/p>\n

How a session feels:
\u201cThe first time that I truly experienced what the Japanese call itakimochi ii \u2013 \u2018painful but satisfying\u2019 \u2013 was towards the end of a session at Dr Stretch,\u201d says our writer Kenji Hall. \u201cMy trainer was a tall, strapping, exuberant man. He jiggled my leg and rotated my hip. He pushed his knee into my hamstrings and rolled my calf muscles over his thigh. It was strangely intimate. Afterwards, there was a lightness in my legs that I hadn\u2019t felt in years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How a simple wellness idea turned into a health movement \u2013 and now an international franchise. There was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[217,215,214,216,4493],"class_list":{"0":"post-10317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-business-of-japan","10":"tag-japans-business","11":"tag-japanese-business","12":"tag-wellness"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}