Chujiro Hayashi (1880–1940) is the bridge between Mikao Usui's Japanese teaching and the Reiki that reached the West. He studied with Usui in the 1920s, ran a busy treatment clinic in Tokyo, trained Hawayo Takata, and developed a clinical style that influenced almost every later Western Reiki school. His life is also a reminder that Reiki history is not a single tidy succession: Hayashi worked alongside the Usui society, later organised his own association, and left a lineage that split into several branches.
Much of what is written about him in English comes from Takata's recollections, from Japanese researchers who interviewed his students, and from a small number of Japanese published sources. The outline is reasonably secure. The detail, especially around his death, is thinner than the confidence of some popular accounts suggests.
A naval officer before he was a healer
Hayashi was born on 15 September 1880 in Kanagawa Prefecture. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1903 and served as a naval officer, eventually reaching the rank of captain. In 1918 he was appointed director of the port affairs department at Ōminato, at the northern tip of Honshu. James Deacon's account describes him as a warm-hearted but serious man, a description attributed to a Japanese source writing in 1928.
The common English description of him as "Dr. Hayashi" needs a note. Some sources call him a medical doctor; Japanese reference works describe a line officer, not a naval surgeon. The title may reflect his later healing practice, or a translation convention, rather than a medical qualification. He was commonly addressed as a doctor by clients and students, and the ambiguity has been repeated in Reiki literature for decades.
Studying with Mikao Usui
Hayashi is generally said to have begun studying at Usui's Nakano centre in May 1925, progressing quickly to the Shinpiden level. That timing matters: Usui died in March 1926, so Hayashi's direct training with him lasted less than a year. The intensity of that period, and Hayashi's previous naval and organisational experience, help explain why he became one of the small group of Shihan authorised to teach.
After Usui's death, the Usui society continued under Jūzaburō Ushida. Hayashi is reported to have helped move the dojo to Shinano-machi, where his own clinic was located, and to have taught there for five days each month. He later left the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, with the split usually dated to 1931. The Gakkai's own history and Hayashi's association are related but not identical.
The Hayashi Reiki Kenkyukai
Around 1930 Hayashi established the Hayashi Reiki Kenkyūkai, usually translated as the Hayashi Reiki Research Association. It was a working clinic and training centre rather than a large movement. Takata later described a small clinic with eight treatment tables, where two practitioners often worked on one client at a time. She recalled seventeen other practitioners there during her apprenticeship, besides Hayashi and his wife Chie.
The clinic kept records. According to the International Center for Reiki Training's historical account, Hayashi drew on his clinic notes to compile the Hayashi Ryōhō Shishin, a guide to hand placements for students. The guide was intended as a fallback for practitioners who could not yet find positions by scanning with their hands. Whether Hayashi also compiled the similar Usui Ryōhō Shishin is less certain.
His teaching method changed over time. In the early 1930s he is said to have used four levels — Shoden, Chuden, Okuden and Shinpiden — but by the time he taught Takata the system had three. He also developed a compressed five-day seminar for students who could not stay for long apprenticeships, combining first and second degree material with daily initiations. This is one of the reasons Western Reiki inherited a weekend-class culture rather than the longer Japanese training model.
What Hayashi emphasised
Hayashi's Reiki was practical and clinical. He focused on hands-on treatment, standardised hand positions and the four symbols rather than the more explicitly spiritual and devotional elements of Usui's system. That does not mean he removed spirituality; it means his teaching was organised around treating people who came to a clinic.
His approach included:
- Pair treatment. Two practitioners could treat one client, one on each side or at different parts of the body.
- Table treatment. Clients lay on a treatment table rather than sitting in a chair, which became the norm in Western Reiki.
- Recorded observations. Hand positions and outcomes were written down and turned into teaching material.
- Formal initiations. Hayashi used and probably developed the denju-style initiation format that Western Reiki later called attunement.
- Symbols as central tools. The three Okuden symbols and the master symbol were taught as part of practice, not as optional extras.
The Shoden, Okuden and Shinpiden structure he used is recognisably Japanese, but the content of each level was already changing under his hands.
Hawayo Takata and the Hawaii journey
Hawayo Takata came to Hayashi's clinic in 1935 while seeking treatment for a serious abdominal and respiratory condition. She was impressed that the practitioners' assessment matched her hospital diagnosis, began receiving daily treatments, and stayed for months. She then asked to learn Reiki. According to the chronology repeated by Takata and by the ICRT, she received first degree in spring 1936, worked at the clinic for about a year, received second degree, and returned to Hawaii in 1937. Hayashi followed in 1938 and initiated her as a master in February of that year.
That sequence is the foundation of the Western lineage: Usui → Hayashi → Takata. It is also the point at which the historical record becomes an oral history. Takata's 1979 recording is the fullest account of her training, and the transcript's publisher notes that some details in her telling have since been shown to be inaccurate. Her account of Hayashi's clinic is vivid and specific; it is not a neutral contemporaneous document.
Hayashi's trip to Hawaii was also a teaching visit. He is said to have given talks and treatments and to have helped establish Reiki there before returning to Japan. The visit is remembered in Hawaii Reiki history as the moment the practice took root outside Japan.
His death in 1940
Hayashi died on 11 May 1940. Japanese sources describe his death as self-inflicted, and the date is consistently given as 11 May. The explanation that circulates in English — that he was pressed by the military for information about Hawaii, refused, was declared a traitor, and chose suicide to avoid disgrace — comes from Takata's later narration and from writers repeating it. It is a serious claim about a specific sequence of events, and the documentary basis is thin.
What can be said with more confidence is that his death was a shock to his students, that his wife Chie Hayashi took over the clinic, and that the clinic eventually closed. The Hayashi line did not end, but it became quiet. Chiyoko Yamaguchi, who trained with Hayashi in 1938, continued to practise for decades and later became the teacher behind Jikiden Reiki. Her son Tadao Yamaguchi and the Jikiden Reiki organisation present that lineage as a direct transmission of Hayashi's Japanese practice.
The contrast between the two legacies is instructive. Takata carried Hayashi's teaching into a Western, simplified, oral system. Yamaguchi's line preserved a Japanese clinical practice with its own manuals and terminology. Both are legitimate descendants of the same teacher, and neither is simply "what Hayashi taught" in every detail.
Hayashi's place in Reiki history
Hayashi is often described as Usui's successor. He was not. The Usui society passed to Ushida and then through a series of presidents, while Hayashi developed his own association. The confusion arises because Takata, his student, became the most influential Reiki teacher in the West and told her version of the story in which Hayashi was Usui's closest disciple and natural heir.
A more accurate summary is this:
- Hayashi was one of the small group of Shihan authorised by Usui.
- He was an innovator who adapted Reiki to a clinical setting.
- He trained Takata, who carried the practice to Hawaii and then to the mainland United States.
- He founded a research association that outlived him only through his wife and a handful of students.
- His death remains historically underdocumented, and the dramatic story attached to it should be attributed rather than repeated as fact.
For anyone tracing a Reiki lineage, Hayashi is usually the second name after Usui and before Takata. For anyone trying to understand Reiki's development, he is more interesting than that: a case study in how a spiritual practice becomes a clinical method, and how a teacher's personal authority can shape a tradition long after his death.
Frequently asked questions
Was Chujiro Hayashi a medical doctor?
The description is common in Reiki literature but not securely supported. Japanese sources describe him as a naval officer and academy graduate. He may have had medical training, but the "Dr." title is not reliable evidence of a medical degree.
When did Hayashi meet Mikao Usui?
Most accounts place his training at Usui's centre in 1925, shortly before Usui's death in March 1926. The exact month and the length of his training are not independently documented.
Did Hayashi found the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai?
No. The society is associated with Usui's institute and with Ushida's organisation after Usui's death. Hayashi founded the separate Hayashi Reiki Kenkyūkai around 1930.
Who took over Hayashi's clinic?
His wife, Chie Hayashi, ran it after his death. It later closed. Chiyoko Yamaguchi, a student from 1938, preserved a related Japanese lineage that became Jikiden Reiki.
Is Hayashi responsible for the hand positions used in Western Reiki?
He is widely credited with formalising a set of treatment hand positions and with the table-based, two-practitioner clinic style. The exact set changed as his teaching developed, and some of his students were taught intuitive placement instead.
Why did Hayashi and the Gakkai separate?
The sources describe a parting around 1931, but they do not give a single agreed reason. Differences over teaching method, clinical emphasis and organisation are all plausible; no contemporaneous explanation is public.
Related topic: History and traditions, Reiki in the West, Types of Reiki, Founder, origins and traditions, Reiki's development in Japan.