Mikao Usui’s Birthday

by Robert Gericke, November 2015, last updated June 2016, En. version August 2016

Even though what someone accomplished in their lifetime – and what they left for posterity - should speak for
itself and ultimately be more relevant than this person’s exact date of birth, the case of Mikao Usui Sensei merits
a closer look. Especially because of the fact that certain information continues to be unknown to the public.

In Berlin, in September 2015, Justin Stein (PhD student and religious scholar at the University of Toronto)
informed us of the recalculation of Mikao Usui’s birth date. As part of his speech on 'The Historical Significance
of Mikao Usui in Japan', he presented this new finding. My colleague, Olaf Böhm (tonbo-reiki.de), subsequently
posted the information on 30 September 2015.

For me, as someone interested in Usui Sensei’s Reiki method, this discovery was especially interesting. I should
mention, however, that no one before had ever undertaken to verify this specific date. Indeed, often the obvious
in history is overlooked. For this reason I meticulously examined Justin Stein’s information as well; the results
ultimately confirmed his claim but also raised new questions.

Due to Justin’s presentation and his recalculation I carried out, among other things, research on the conversion of
Japanese dates, with the aim of verifying Justin’s claim.

Upon inquiring at several universities, asking department heads and authors of relevant academic literature, I
have come to believe that the precise conversion of Mikao Usui Sensei’s birth date, which his memorial stone
states to be the 15th day of the 8th month of the Keiô Period (1st year), results in the date of 4 October 1865.
This date takes into consideration the Imperial edict of 1873, which adjusted the Japanese calendar to the
Gregorian calendar. The date coincides perfectly with Justin Stein’s claim based on the date inscribed on Usui
Sensei’s memorial stone in the Saihoji Temple Cemetery of Tokyo.

Justin Stein first presented the 4th of October 1865 as Mikao Usui’s birthday at his September 2015 speech in
Berlin on the occasion of a symposium to mark Mikao Usui Sensei’s 150th birthday.

Here is the link to his September 2015 speech in Berlin on the occasion of a symposium to mark Mikao Usui
Sensei’s 150th birthday:

“The Significance of Mikao Usui in Japanese History”

The German version of these speech you can find here:

"Die historische Bedeutung von Mikao Usui in Japan"

Furthermore, the professors consulted as part of my research were able to provide me with some other interesting
information on this date, which I will elaborate later in a different context.

At any rate, the day on which Mikao Usui first saw the light of day in Taniai in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture was very
special in many respects.

It should also be noted that there continue to be other views regarding the exact date of Mikao Usui’s birthday in
Japan. One of these is the 24th of June in the 1st year of the Keiô Period, a date calculated by re-converting 15
August 1865 into the Japanese calendar before its adjustment to the western calendar system in 1873.

© Copyright Robert Gericke - www.gendai-reiki-ho.de - all rights reserved

Since the text on the memorial stone was composed after the calendar adjustment (1873), namely in 1927, this
imprecision can only persist if the author calculated the date according to the calendar used in 1927, neglecting
the fact that a different calendar was in place at the time of Usui Sensei’s birth. In Japan at this time, such a
miscalculation would have been unlikely but not impossible. This would have been the only way to set the birth
date as the 24th day of the 6th month of the 1st year of the Keiô Period. Converted to the Gregorian calendar, these
date would correspond to 15 August 1865, but only if the aforementioned calculation error had been made or the
given date was inaccurate.

Should this mistake not have been made and if the date given by the author of the text, Ushida Sensei (a student
and direct successor of Usui Sensei) and Professor Masayuki Okada (professor of literature at the Imperial
University of Tokyo) were correct, Mikao Usui Sensei would have been born on the 15th day of the 8th month of
the 1st year of the Keiô period, in accordance with the text on the memorial stone. The exact conversion of this
date to the Gregorian calendar has conclusively been found to be 4 October 1865.

It remains an open question whether or not Ushida and Okada used the correct date. However, since it is to be
expected that the members of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai will have known and honored the birthday of their
method’s founder, one could assume this to be the case – regardless of the calendar systems. In summary, going
by the date on the memorial stone, Usui’s birthday can either be celebrated on 4 October (if the date is taken at
face-value) or 15 August, if one considers the date on the memorial stone to be a miscalculation. This would
suggest that the date was 24 June based on the old Japanese calendar that was subsequently recalculated. This,
however, is something that everyone must decide for themselves.

As Koyama Sensei always said, one should trust facts more than hypotheses.

I am happy to concur with this statement.

Ultimately, the exact birth date of Usui Sensei will be less important than what he bequeathed to posterity,
namely a path to a happy and healthy life which even today is less familiar to many Reiki practitioners than the
hands on treatment to improve well-being. Usui Sensei saw healing through the laying on of hands merely as the
first step on the path to Anshin Ritsumei (a condition of unshakeable inner peace and supreme happiness), a path
to enlightenment which he imparted to his students not only through Gokai – the five teachings of Usui Sensei –
but also through his special spiritual training, the “Guide to Enlightenment”, so that they too could one day
achieve Anshin Ritsumei.

This, to me, is of far greater importance than an exact birth date and yet it is refreshing and gratifying to receive
more information on Reiki-ho and Usui Sensei even after all these years.

Many thanks to all the involved researchers!

Robert Gericke
www.gendai-reiki-ho.de

Anyone wishing to find out more about Asian calendar systems will find information here (I assume no responsibility for the
content of these sites – visited 22 April 2016):
http://www.kultur-in-asien.de/Kalender/seite480.htm
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanische_Zeitrechnung

The following academic literature can be used to verify Japanese date specifications:

- Uchida, Masao 内田正男: Nihon rekijitsu genten 日本暦日原典, fourth edition. Tōkyō; Yūzankaku Publishing House,
1992. Information regarding the year 1865 is found on page 488
- Tsuchihashi, Paul Yachita (1952): Japanese Chronological Tables from 601 to 1872 A. D. 邦暦西暦対照表. Tōkyō:
Sophia University Press. (http://katalog.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/titel/67189378)
- Zöllner, Reinhard (2003): Japanische Zeitrechnung. Ein Handbuch (Erfurter Reihe zur Geschichte Asiens, volume four).
Munich: Iudicium Publishing House. (http://katalog.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/titel/65734643)

© Copyright Robert Gericke - www.gendai-reiki-ho.de - all rights reserved