Actually;
There was very little in Japanese culture aside from the code of Bushido and what derived from that (The samurai, the living blade swords, the ninja) that did not derive from China originally.
According to first person sources that were available to me in my family, the Russian Tsarist aristocracy used tickling as foreplay and as a punishment, but never for interrogation. They learned about it from the Cossacks, who learned about it from the Tartars they conquered for the Tsar.
The Tartars claimed to have learned it from the Chinese, who allegedly also used it for both foreplay and punishment, but not for interrogation. An interesting distinction, IMHO.
