Silicon chips, biotechnology, sensors, exotic materials, and bizarre mathematics are par for the course for Japanese new products. Even to market something not stemming from the latest scientific discoveries runs against the grain for some companies!

But happily, traditions of the new have not totally usurped values of the old. From Shiseido, Japan's leading cosmetics maker, comes a remarkable product based on ideas that go back to the dawn of recorded time. It's based on ideas about foot massage, a.k.a foot reflexology, that trace back to the Chinese Emperor Hwang who lived about 5,000 years ago. Hwang's studies, called the Method of Toe Observation, were one precursor of acupuncture and Oriental medicine.

Shiseido's new product is a custom-made stone pathway. Stones of different sizes and shapes make up different sections of the path. The result is aesthetic, but the idea is not to look at the path. Barefoot, or in stocking feet, you stroll along the track. In doing so, you are on an ancient pathway to renewed health and fitness.

The varying shapes of the stones enable them to press 36 different spots on your toes and the soles of your feet. Each of the pressure points relates to a group of body organs. Walking along the path stimulates energy flows within the body. This has a beneficial effect on the organs, health, and wellness.

Shunichi Abe, Deputy General Manager of Shiseido's New Business Development Division designed the path. He came across Foot Reflexology while living in Taiwan. The way it could relieve a variety of intractable medical problems and help people feel healthy impressed him. Back in Japan, he joined a team looking for new ideas to promote employee health.

The stone pathway provides a do-it-yourself foot massage without the need for an expert masseur. Simply walking along the path massages key pressure points on the foot in progression.

The first section of the pathway has pebbles placed in a mortar bed designed to give a very soft stimulus that becomes stronger at each step forward. Next comes a curved bridge covered with ridges of fine gritty stones. To walk over the bridge you need to grip the ridges with your toes on the up slope and with the arch of your foot on the down

Over the last three years, Shiseido has built pathways on top of their Ginza HQ and at several factories for their employees to use whenever they feel like it. They are now also marketing the pathway as a product.

It doesn't come cheap. To design and build one pathway in Japan costs about ¥25 million. This is because each path is made entirely by hand, each stone individually selected and placed in the path by a trained artisan. According to Abe, in any lot of stones, over 8O% must be rejected. As well as having the right shape, the stones must be beautiful. These are not easy to find. Shiseido import them from the Philippines, China, and Thailand.

Though the stones have their aesthetics, the path has little resemblance to Japan's famous temple gardens where contemplating a few strategically placed rocks amid a sea of sand or moss leads to serenity. The resemblance is more to miniature golf — the kind where you must putt the ball over obstacles to score.

To someone not versed in Oriental thinking, it might seem easy to take an impression of one hand-made path and then cast it plastic. Mass production, mass marketing, and health for the masses ? Abe says this would not succeed. Only natural stones have the right qualities.

The reason relates to another Oriental concept of health, called "Qi," (or "Ki" in Japanese), a vital energy that is part of the natural world. Human beings have varying amounts of it, depending on the state of their health. The right kinds of stones possess Qi as well. So walking along a stone path massages the feet and enhances Qi in ways plastic could not.

But there is an alternative. The hands, like the feet, contain a many important pressure points. Climbing a jagged rock face with bare hands would achieve similar results

David Kilburn