Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast episode episode 553, Laying on Hands, Part

1.

So over the course of this podcast, I've covered a decent variety of what we could call

new religious movements, the syncretistic religions that began to emerge in the late

Edo years and continue today as a collection of ideas borrowed

from existing traditions to fit the challenges of our modern times.

Today I want to look at something that's kind of a religious practice, but also you see it

very often divorced from that context.

It's a belief system, supposedly grounded in religious history, but also a sort of

commodified mystic teaching, that you often see practiced by those with no connection to the belief

system it really supposedly grew out of. Indeed, the term for the practice itself has become

somewhat disassociated with the actual ideas it refers to

in much the same way that many in the English-speaking world use the word Zen not to refer to a

specific sect of Mahayana Buddhism but to anything that's vaguely calming and has an Asian-e-a-a-a-a-thetic.

Today, we're going to talk about Reiki, a practice which has

roots in Japan, but which was actually popularized overseas. Now, a few things to get into

before we get into it. First and foremost, I am not a Reiki practitioner or a believer. I consider

myself very skeptical about these things.

I won't actually try and get into the stuff I do believe, because in the finest Jewish tradition,

if I did, there'd be a literal whole episode just on that. But suffice it to say,

Reiki is not something I think has any validity as an actual objectively effective practice.

However, I do think that part of being a good historian is trying your best to be objective,

...