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What would Mikao Usui think of modern Western Reiki?
September 26, 2026
Partly size, mostly history. The association founded in Mikao Usui’s time still exists, but its Tokyo headquarters was bombed in the Second World War and the people inside were killed, and after the war it dwindled. Western-style Reiki came back to Japan in the 1980s and 90s, and interest in the traditional practice has been growing slowly since the 2000s, but the association itself is still small and elderly.
That is an interesting question. Well, it is a smaller country, so that comes into it. But there was an association that existed, and still exists today, started in Mikao Usui’s time.
In the early 1900s there was a lot of interest in hands-on healing and meditation. It was quite normal for people to practise hands-on healing, to meditate, to recite poetry, especially the poetry of the Emperor of the time, and to use these things as tools for self-development. But in the Second World War the headquarters in Tokyo was bombed, and everyone in it was killed. After the war the association dwindled away.
Then Reiki came across to the West, and eventually Western-style Reiki came back to Japan, so it did a circle. There were all sorts of Reiki in Japan in the 80s and 90s: dolphin Reiki, crystal Reiki, all sorts. But the association always existed.
Around the millennium there seemed to be a greater interest. I was interested in the history of the system, and we started contacting people who taught in Japan from a traditional perspective. That is slowly growing, but the association itself is still quite small and its members are quite elderly. It will be interesting to see how it develops, and I hope we can keep learning about the system from people in Japan.
Who. The Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, 臼井靈氣療法学会, the association founded around Mikao Usui in the 1920s. It has had a succession of presidents since Mikao Usui and still meets, but it does not advertise and does not recruit.
Where the story comes from. From the association’s own materials and from the Japanese teachers who began speaking with Western researchers in the late 1990s. Before that, the West assumed the system had died out in Japan altogether.
What the sources actually say. That the practice was one of many popular self-cultivation methods in early twentieth-century Japan, that the war broke its institutions, and that what most Japanese people now call Reiki arrived from the West in the 1980s.
Why it matters. It is why “Japanese Reiki” and “traditional Reiki” are not the same thing as “Reiki as taught in Japan today”. Most teachers in Japan now teach a Western form; the older practice survives in this small association.
You might also ask: What does Mikao Usui’s gravestone actually say? · What is the real story of how Reiki left Japan? · What is the Japanese word for a Reiki practitioner?
The history, with the sources, is in The Reiki Sourcebook and inside Shinpiden+.
More questions answered: Reiki Questions Answered.
