Mikao Usui Myths: Fact-Checking Three Legends From Reiki Courses
Reiki course descriptions on Udemy and marketing materials regularly feature three narratives: Reiki as a cure for unemployment, Usui as a samurai who lost his income during the Meiji reforms, and Mount Kurama as a place where he nearly died — or even deliberately risked his life. I checked each of these narratives against historical sources. Results below.
Narrative 1. «Reiki Will Save You From Unemployment»
This narrative exists and is actively used. A few examples:
- The site Reiki Rays publishes an article with a direct headline: «Unemployed? How to Realign With Your Soul Path» — three steps for those who have lost their jobs: healing through Reiki, changing your mindset, aligning your life path.
- Instagram reels offer to «earn lakhs a month through Reiki, working from home.»
- Facebook groups discuss whether one can «quit their job for Reiki as a full-time career.»
- On Udemy there is a dedicated course: «Start A Business in Reiki + Energy Healing» (same Melissa Crowhurst) — covering marketing strategies, pricing, administrative steps.
Verdict on Narrative 1: confirmed. Reiki course marketing systematically exploits the theme of job loss and income search. This is a working commercial strategy — it appeals to people at a point of vulnerability. The narrative itself is not a lie (a Reiki practice can indeed become a profession), but it significantly overstates the predictability of that path.
Narrative 2. «Usui Was a Samurai Who Lost His Income Due to the Meiji Reforms»
This version is retold by many courses and reviews. One of them — Marko Orlović’s Udemy course analyzed in our previous article — claims: «Mikao Usui was a member of a samurai clan in Japan, he lost his source of income during the reform era and Reiki saved him from poverty.»
Let’s check the sources.
What Is Confirmed
According to Wikipedia and the memorial stone at Usui’s grave (transcription available at ihreiki.com), Usui’s family belonged to the Chiba clan — hatamoto samurai (personal guard of the shogun). This is indeed a high rank within the samurai hierarchy. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 abolished the class system, and the Haitōrei edict of 1876 definitively banned samurai from wearing swords. Usui’s family did indeed lose its status.
What Is Not Confirmed
First: Usui was not a samurai. He was born on August 15, 1865. The Meiji Restoration began in 1868 — Usui was 3 years old at the time. By the time he grew up and became an adult, the class system had long ceased to exist. He was a descendant of samurai by lineage, but never served in that role. The difference is fundamental.
Second: there is no evidence of poverty. IHReiki.com cites historical sources: Usui worked as a private secretary to politician Shimpei Goto (later Mayor of Tokyo), studied history, medicine, Buddhism, and psychology, traveled to Europe, America, and China, practiced martial arts at the Menkyo Kaiden level (the highest rank). His brothers became a doctor and a police officer. This is not the biography of a man who fell into poverty.
Third: the «beggars story» is a documented fabrication by Takata. Hawayo Takata — the woman who brought Reiki to the West in the late 1930s — told a story about how Usui healed beggars in the slums of Kyoto, but they kept returning to begging because «it is easier to beg than to work.» This story served as justification for introducing payment for Reiki in Western countries, where such practice was unfamiliar. As ihreiki.com directly notes: «The 1923 earthquake probably served as a background source of inspiration for Hawayo Takata’s well-known ‘beggars story’.» This story is absent from Usui’s memorial stone and from Japanese sources.
Verdict on Narrative 2: partly correct in form, false in substance. Usui’s family did indeed belong to a samurai clan and did indeed lose its class status in the Meiji era. But Usui personally was not a samurai, did not live in poverty, and did not «save himself» through Reiki from financial ruin. The marketing version transfers the collective history of the clan onto the personal biography of an individual — and adds a fabricated crisis that does not exist in the sources.
The Myth of the «Great Death» and Suicide: What Happened on Mount Kurama
In a number of Western retellings, the story of Usui’s meditation on Mount Kurama becomes a story about «suicide,» «deliberately starving oneself to death,» or a «near-death experience.» Where does this come from, and what actually happened.
What Happened on Kurama
According to the memorial stone (in Hyakuten Inamoto’s translation): in 1922, Usui climbed Mount Kurama and undertook a 21-day practice of kusyu shinren — a form of ascetic Buddhist discipline (shugyo) involving fasting, prayer, and meditation. On the 21st day he felt a strong impact at the top of his head — and attained enlightenment together with the Reiki method.
As ihreiki.com describes it: «One day he climbed Mount Kurama and after 21 days of strict fasting without food, he suddenly felt a great Reiki above his head and attained enlightenment, receiving Reiki Ryoho.»
What «The Great Death» Means in Buddhist Context
The term «Great Death» (Jp. 大死, daishi) is a Buddhist concept describing the dissolution of the ego in deep meditation. Not a physical death, not suicide, not clinical death. It is the experience of the complete extinguishing of the «self» as a prerequisite for awakening — analogous to what in Zen is called satori. To translate «Great Death» as «suicide attempt» or «near-death experience» is to apply a Western psychological framework to a Buddhist meditative term.
Why the Suicide Myth Fails Logically
- A 21-day fast with meditation is a standard Buddhist ascetic practice (shugyo), documented in thousands of cases in Japanese religious tradition. It is neither an anomaly nor a life-threatening danger.
- Usui climbed the mountain for this purpose only once in his life — in 1922, at the age of 56, as a mature practitioner. This is not an act of desperation, but a deliberate spiritual practice.
- After Mount Kurama, Usui opened the Gakkai (school) in Tokyo, managed to teach more than 2,000 students, helped survivors of the 1923 earthquake, and traveled around the country. A person who had a «suicidal experience» does not launch large-scale public activities.
- Usui died on March 9, 1926, from a stroke while traveling to Fukuyama to teach. This is recorded in the memorial stone and confirmed by Wikipedia.
The Myth of Stopping Blood «By Clapping Hands»
This element appears, in particular, in Marko Orlović’s Udemy course: «One day Usui fell from a mountain, cut himself — and activated Reiki by clapping his hands, stopping the blood in seconds.»
This episode does not appear in any verified source on the history of Reiki — not in the memorial stone, not in Japanese documents, not in academic research. It is absent from ihreiki.com, absent from Wikipedia, absent from Frank Arjava Petter (one of the most thoroughly researched Western scholars of Japanese Reiki). It likely emerged from a folk «telephone game» with a version of how Usui discovered the healing properties of his hands — but the specific plot of falling, cutting, and clapping is a late fabrication without a source.
Why this matters: such details reveal not merely ignorance of history, but a willingness to retell unverified anecdotes as facts. If the story of Usui in a course is presented with factual errors — what does that say about the reliability of the rest of the content?
Where These Myths Come From: The Role of Hawayo Takata
Most Western distortions of Usui’s history trace back to Hawayo Takata (1900–1980) — a Japanese-American woman who brought Reiki to Hawaii and the United States. She trained under Chujiro Hayashi (Usui’s student) in the 1930s, became a master, and began teaching in America.
Reiki historians have documented at least three distortions introduced by Takata:
- «Christian origins»: Takata claimed Usui received his knowledge at a Christian university in Chicago. This has been refuted — the university could not find him in its archives. The reason for adding the Christian framework was anti-Japanese sentiment in the US after World War II. Wikipedia states directly: «Takata probably added this information in reaction to anti-Japanese sentiment in America.»
- «The beggars story»: the legend that Usui healed beggars but they kept begging because «it is easier to ask.» It served as justification for charging money for Reiki.
- «The samurai and the lost income»: a marketing reimagining of the real story of the family’s samurai ancestry — turning it into a narrative about personal financial crisis and salvation through Reiki.
Takata taught Reiki in America until her death in 1980 and trained 22 masters. They all inherited her version of the history. All Western Reiki courses, including the majority of courses on Udemy, trace back precisely to this lineage — and to this version of history.
What Is Actually Known About Usui: A Brief Fact-Check
| Claim | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Usui was born into a family of samurai origin (Chiba clan, hatamoto) | ✅ Confirmed | Memorial stone, Wikipedia |
| Usui personally served as an active samurai | ❌ False — he was 3 years old at the Meiji Restoration | Birth date 1865, reforms from 1868 |
| Usui lived in poverty and Reiki saved him from destitution | ❌ No documentary evidence | Ihreiki.com, Wikipedia |
| Usui meditated for 21 days on Mount Kurama in 1922 | ✅ Confirmed | Memorial stone |
| «Great Death» = suicide attempt or near-death experience | ❌ False — Buddhist term for «ego dissolution» | Buddhist tradition, ihreiki.com |
| Usui fell off a mountain, cut himself, and stopped the blood by clapping | ❌ No source exists | Absent from all sources |
| Usui died of a stroke in 1926 while traveling to teach | ✅ Confirmed | Memorial stone, Wikipedia |
| Usui earned a degree at the University of Chicago | ❌ Refuted — university archives contain no record of him | Wikipedia, Frank Arjava Petter research |
Why This Matters When Choosing a Course
Accuracy in retelling Usui’s history is not academic pedantry. It is a signal of how carefully the course author works with sources.
A course that claims Usui «was a samurai who lost his income in the Meiji era» is retelling Takata’s marketing legend without checking it. A course where Usui «stopped blood by clapping hands» is adding a fabricated episode with no source. This predictably coincides with what we saw in the table from the previous article: Marko Orlović’s course with such a history received a «🔴 Not Recommended» rating.
A good Reiki teacher — like a good teacher of any subject — must be able to distinguish documented history from popular legend. This does not mean that Reiki fails to work without accurate history. It means that an author who is careless with facts is, with high probability, careless about everything else as well.
Sources:
- Wikipedia — Mikao Usui
- IHReiki.com — Usui Mikao (with memorial stone citations)
- Shaun McKeown — Are Online Reiki Courses A Good Idea? (Jikiden Reiki)
- Reiki Rays — Unemployed? How to Realign With Your Soul Path
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