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MOONLIGHT MANUALS

How These Guides Are Made

The three labels every claim carries, what counts as a source, consent and safety first, the Japanese context, what the manuals will not do, and how to tell us about a mistake.

Three labels

Every claim in the manuals is one of three kinds: research (supported by clinical or laboratory studies, and cited), tradition (taught within a lineage and recorded in its own texts, presented as that tradition tells it), or experiential (works for some people and not others, offered to try and never as a promise). We keep them apart so that you can decide for yourself how far to trust each one.

What counts as a source

Systematic reviews and official guidelines carry the most weight; then clinical trials and large surveys; then standard textbooks and classic clinical studies. For a tradition, we go to its own texts. We do not use marketing or articles whose sources cannot be traced, and wherever we can, numbers come from the original study.

Consent and safety first

Every hands-on manual begins with agreement and a signal to stop. Pain is a signal to stop. Hygiene rules, and the signs that call for a doctor, are written in wherever they apply.

The Japanese context

Where law or regulation matters, we write from Japan as it stands: that practising anma, massage or shiatsu as a business requires a national licence, the Anti-Prostitution Act, prescription of the low-dose pill, emergency contraception at the pharmacy. Costs are approximate and vary with clinic and time.

What the manuals do not do

They do not diagnose, prescribe or stand in for a doctor. They include no technique that injures the body. They use no photographs, only line drawings. They contain nothing involving minors.

On medical information

The manuals are general information based on the sources available to us. They are not medical advice and have not been reviewed by a clinician. For your own body, health or medicines, talk to a doctor. For sudden severe pain, heavy bleeding or difficulty breathing, get medical care straight away.

How they are written

Each is written in Japanese first, with an English edition. Every manual opens with its take-aways and contents, uses drawings and tables where they help, and ends with its sources. The manuals link to one another and to the reference essays, in both directions.

If you find a mistake

If you notice an error of fact, or information that has gone out of date, tell us through the inquiry form. We will check it and correct it.

From here

Moonlight ManualsEvery manual, shelf by shelf.Glossary of ConceptsThe words the manuals stand on, each labelled.Tell us about a mistakeThrough the private inquiry form.
  • What This Library Kept Finding

    Nothing here was written to a thesis. Each page went where its own subject took it — and somewhere past the fortieth essay, a handful of the same shapes turned out to keep appearing in subjects with nothing to do with each other. One of them was reached six separate times. This page gives each finding its portable test, says what it specifically does not license, discounts the whole exercise honestly before claiming anything, and — the reason it exists — opens a door to every essay that found it.

  • Does It Work?

    Four kinds of claim sorted by how checkable each one is, an honest account of what “it worked for me” can establish, and why none of that means you were fooled.

  • Fascia, and the Gap Between the Research and the Sales Pitch

    What fascia anatomically is, why interest in it exploded, and the honest account of what manual work can and cannot do to it. The explanation usually given for fascia work is probably wrong, and the true one is more interesting.

  • リンパ: The Claim, and the Part of It That Is True

    A legitimate clinical technique, properly evidenced for lymphoedema, sold to people who do not have lymphoedema — with the evidence travelling quietly along behind the word. And a two-minute test you can run with your own skin.

The reading letter

Twice a week. Three pieces, then one. Chosen from what you ask for, and nothing is sold to you.

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