“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice ...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..Lewis Carroll
or:
THE STRANGE TALE OF THE '1986 REIKI JOURNAL ARTICLE'
THAT NEVER WAS...
Copyright © 2003 James Deacon

The short article, reprinted below, has appeared on more than one website and claims to be from a 1986 issue of 'The Reiki Journal'.

['The Reiki Journal' is a publication of The American Reiki Association, Inc. - the organisation founded in 1980 by Barbara Ray and Takata-Sensei.]

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Tracing the History: a Japanese Book on Dr. Usui

"Mieko Mitsui, a certified instructor of the Radiance Technique® who lives in New York City and teaches there and in Japan, has researched more information about Real Reiki® in Japan during trips last year and this. In a trip in 1985, she reported meeting with an elderly man at the home of friends, where Mieko was told of a privately printed book, "Usui Reiki Gakkai", which reportedly talks about "Reiki" and a man named Usui. The book was described as an academic text, published just over a decade ago, by a mathematician at Meiji University in Tokyo.

Mieko said she was told that Dr. Usui was born in 1865 and died in 1926. She also said that the seven degrees of the Dr. Usui system of Real Reiki® were numbered in reverse in the Japanese tradition - that the Seventh Degree was the first level studied, the equivalent to the First Degree in the U.S. (Mieko explained that this reverse order can be found in other areas of Japanese culture. Addresses on a letter, for example, are often given in the reverse of the form in the U.S. and the western world, with the country listed first, then the district, then city, followed by a person's address. A person's name is given last.)

Mieko said that the basic philosophy of "Reiki," according to the elderly man she interviewed, "is that the universe is ourselves...the act of carrying Light." Mieko said she was also given a second book on healing sciences by friends in Japan. This book, whose title roughly translates to "The Mastery of Healing with the Hands", mentions numerous philosophies and techniques for healing There are passages about a great healer named Usui, according to Mieko, although the book does not specifically mention "Reiki" and the man called Usui in the book is not identified by a first name."

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Now, we know that in 1985, Ms. Mitsui (who now apparently lives in Hawaii), did indeed go back to Japan on a Reiki fact-finding mission.

We know that she started teaching 'western'-style Reiki there [her students include Hiroshi Doi - founder of Gendai Reiki Ho] and in the process could be said to have been responsible for single-handedly sparking a 'Reiki Revival' in Japan.

We also know that Meiko Mitsui's initial discoveries have, over the years, inspired other Reiki practitioners to carry out research into both the origins of Reiki, and also into its current surviving forms of expression in Japan.

However, this is the thing I find slightly strange.

In June this year (2003) I contacted The American Reiki Association, Inc. [or, as it is now called: The Radiance Technique International Association].

It was my intention to acquire either an actual back-copy of the relevant issue of 'The Reiki Journal' - or at very least, a good quality Xerox of the original article itself - along with permission to reproduce it here in the All Energy-Therapies Web, Reiki Pages.

What follows is an extract from the reply, by the TRTIA's Director of Office Services, to my enquiries:

"...we have gone back into storage and found our archive copies of "The Reiki Journal" from 1986. There were 4 published, for January-March, April-June, July-September, and October-December. I have now looked through each and every one of them, and there are no articles about Meiko Mitsui ...
... Whatever the article you found may be, it is not an excerpt from "The Reiki Journal" in 1986...

It seems that it is a fabrication, as are many pages on the Web. Feel free to let the person who posted it know that it is not from a 1986 issue of "The Reiki Journal," too..."

So, this leads me to question, if this isn' t simply a case of someone not being thorough - i.e. not checking the purported origins of a document before publishing it on the web, why would anyone want to fabricate such an article?

Unless.....