"With thankfulness we receive and live according to the principles prescribed by the Meiji emperor." Mikao Usui, as translated in The Legacy of Dr Usui, by Frank Arjava Petter p 14.

"These poems were composed by the Meiji emperor, who wanted to give his people instructions for a life worthy of a human being" Frank Arjava Petter, about Dr Usui’s handbook

Dr Usui deeply revered the Meiji emperor. Mikao Usui adapted the emperor’s words into the Reiki ideals and including 125 of the emperor’s poems in his handbook.

The Meiji emperor’s regime changed the face of Japan more than any administration before or since. Due to the nature of Japan at the time, and his lack of intimates, it is not possible to separate how much was the emperor and how much was his administration.

The emperor started as someone who expected to live his whole life in seclusion. Many who lived in Japan during previous emperors were not even sure who the emperor was. Under the reign of the shoguns, the emperor was a symbolic ruler only. His court had no real power, the shogunate controlled the budget.

For several hundred years, the existence of the emperor had been a legal fiction. In an account written shortly after the emperor’s death, his birth was described "At the time of his birth, the emperor labored under all of the disadvantages of being a god." Hardly anyone was allowed to see his face, he could not go outside except in a palanquin. He had few amusements other than composing poetry. Other than appearing in ceremonies, he had no duties. As an adult, "He was tall and strongly built for one of his race. He had dignity, he had courtesy, he had intuition, and he had a rich fund of common sense which one would have expected from a self made man, rather than a hermit god."

"The fifteen year old boy who succeeded to the crown had observed that if Japan continued to bind herself with her proud traditions, she would be at the mercy of the western powers, who had gobbled up most of Asia between them.

The hardest person in Japan to find out information about seems to be Mikao Usui. The second hardest person to find out about is The Meiji emperor.

The Meiji emperor kept no personal diary, had no close friends who reminisced about him. All decisions were issued in his name, yet most historians focus exclusively on the advisors to the throne. When he took the throne at the age of 16, undoubtedly the advisors played a major role, but what of the next 45 years of his reign?

Under this emperor Japan transformed itself from a feudal society to a major world power. This is the emperor whose governent took over from the shoguns. This was the first emperor to grant audiences and be seen in public. Every home had his picture. He was revered as a god. He had concubines as had emperors before him, but most pictures depict a nuclear family picture with his empress and child in an effort to show the west Japan was civilized.

His only personal outlet seen by the public appears to have been his poetry. Some of which Usui valued enough to make a large section of it in his handbook.