Mikao Usui is the founder of the system of Reiki. He was born on 15 August 1865, in the village of Taniai mura in the Yamagata district of the Gifu Prefecture, in Japan. His father’s name was Uzaemon and they were from the Chiba clan.
Mikao Usui married Suzuki Sadako and they had two children, a boy, Fuji, and a girl, Toshiko. He is thought to have studied on hiei zan and practiced certain meditations on kurama yama. It is said that Mikao Usui practiced Shugendô and that his teachings are founded in this practice of mountain Buddhism.
His teachings included using waka, the five precepts, meditations and techniques, mantras and/or symbols, and reiju.
Professor Judith Rabinovitch writes that, ‘Japan was in a great popular health movement from the teens onward and continuing well up through the 30s, only hampered by Japan's entry into WWII. Hand healers, psychics, intuitives, and every imaginable kind of psychic healer plied their trades all around the country. However deeply respected and influential he was among his immediate healer-peers and disciples, Usui was but one island of healing activity.’
The names of 11 of the 21 Master students of Mikao Usui have been recorded in a booklet used by the Usui Reiki Ryôhô Gakkai.
Mikao Usui’s posthumous Buddhist name noted at the memorial stone site is Reizan-in Shuyo Tenshin Koji.