Hawayo Takata - Later Work

Later Work

Takata returned to Tokyo in 1940, as World War II was imminent. She was led, she said, by a dream in which Hayashi appeared to her. There, by Takata's account, Hayashi announced that she would be his successor as Grand Master. Hayashi, a reserve officer in the Japanese Navy, was called to active military duty. As a Buddhist and pacifist, Hayashi performed seppuku rather than participate in the bloodshed of war.

She returned to Hawaii and taught Reiki for the next thirty years. Until 1970, Takata taught only the first and second level of Reiki instruction. Although she trained scores of people to be Reiki practitioners, Takata did not create any Reiki masters during that time.

Between 1970 and her death in 1980, Takata taught the third level of Reiki instruction and initiated twenty-two Reiki Masters. She charged $10,000 U.S. for this training and has been criticized for making Reiki mastery an elite club for the wealthy. Takata stated that people should be willing to pay as much as a house for this attunement, and set the fee based on how much it cost her to buy her own house. She saw this as an appropriate "exchange of energy" and cited a tale she said was told to her by Hayashi, the point of which was that for those who had not paid for their healing, they had no incentive to stay well.

One source says:

Her legacy may be mixed. Certainly those in the Western world who have had the blessing of Reiki in their lives are grateful to Mrs. Takata for bringing Reiki to our society ,a society which often fails to understand let alone practise the meaning of honour and sacredness, in it's fast paced, money focused world. Yet Independent researchers traveling in Japan in the past 10 years have discovered that it is quite unlikely Dr. Usui ever designated a successor or even claimed the title of Grand Master himself, of course this cannot be proven outright, as Usui can no longer be asked personally. Apparently he did initiate several Reiki Masters, of which Chujiro Hayashi was one, but they were all equals. None was of a higher rank than others. Dr. Usui did set up an organization to carry on the work of Reiki but he did not set up a Grand Master system.

Takata's insistence that there was a single leader among practitioners of Reiki (this may have been discussed with her teacher, Chujiro Hayashi, when she was given the Shinpinden attunement and Hayashi visited Hawaii) and her failure to name a successor, has been some focus of discord within the Reiki community for decades and may have led to the development of traditional and non-traditional factions. However human nature being what it is, it is also possible that Takata, in insisting herself as single leader was simply trying to contain the tradition of what she was taught herself, in the western (mind) world.