What is the cultural appropriation question in Reiki?

Mikao Usui wanted the system of Reiki to go out into the world and be available to anyone, anywhere; he said so in the early question-and-answers in the manuals. What he did not say was that it should become a different practice. He built a system grounded in Japanese culture. Take it out of that and you are no longer practising the system of Reiki; you are appropriating it and changing its foundation.

We have taken a Japanese practice, and Usui, the founder, was very happy for the system of Reiki to go out into the world. He said so in those early manuals where the questions and answers were written down. He wanted the system to be available to anyone, anywhere.

But he did not say, I want it to become a totally different practice. He created a system, and he created it for a reason, and that system is grounded in Japanese culture.

If we take it out of that, then we are not practising the system of Reiki. We are culturally appropriating it and turning it into something that belongs to another culture, and that means changing the whole foundation and understanding of the system.

Who. The question-and-answer text is in the Usui Reiki Ryōhō Hikkei, the manual attributed to the Japanese association, in which Usui is asked whether the practice is for everyone and answers that it is: it should be shared so that the whole world benefits.

Where the story comes from. From the Hikkei itself, translated into English in the late 1990s, and from the memorial stone.

What the sources actually say. That the practice was meant to spread, and that it was Japanese in every part.

The honest answer. Renaming its parts, stripping the Japanese out and adding another culture’s cosmology, then still calling it the system of Reiki, is the appropriation. The line is not who practises; it is what they practise.

You might also ask: Can you practise the system of Reiki if you are not Japanese? · How is Reiki practised differently in Japan versus the West? · Why did the West remove the most important part of Reiki?

I teach the system as it comes from Japan, and say clearly what was added later, inside Shinpiden+.

More questions answered: Reiki Questions Answered.