The Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (臼井靈氣療法學會, "Usui Reiki Healing Method Society") is the organisation Mikao Usui founded in Tokyo in 1922 to teach and preserve his practice.
The founding
Usui opened his first school and society in Tokyo in the spring of 1922, after his experience on Mount Kurama. The Gakkai brought his students together to learn the method, share practice, and keep its teachings alive. When Usui died in 1926, the society continued without him — and, remarkably, it continues in Japan to this day.
A line of presidents
The Gakkai has been led by a succession of presidents who carried the lineage forward. The earliest are usually named as Juzaburo Ushida and Kanichi Taketomi, followed over the decades by figures such as Yoshiharu Watanabe, Hoichi Wanami, Kimiko Koyama, and Masaki Kondo. Through them the society has maintained an unbroken chain back to Usui himself.
A private tradition
For most of the twentieth century the Gakkai kept a low profile — a members-only society in Japan, little known abroad. Western practitioners, whose Reiki came through Hawayo Takata, were largely unaware it still existed. That changed in the 1990s, when researchers and teachers began to document the Japanese roots of the practice and drew wider attention to the society.
Why it matters
The Gakkai matters because it preserves a form of Reiki close to Usui’s original teaching, with its own emphasis on meditation, the precepts, and self-cultivation. Its rediscovery helped spark today’s renewed interest in Japanese-style Reiki, and a fuller picture of where the practice began.
Much of the society’s early history was kept privately, and accounts differ between sources. The details above follow the versions most commonly cited by Reiki historians.