Japanese Ghost Stories

Koizumi Yakumo, also known as Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904)

-attended classes on releasing ki potential are taught by Kurita Masahiro, a former Buddhist priest who is now a physician on the Faculty of Medicine at Tokyo University. The author of more than seventeen books, Kurita regularly appears on television to showcase his ki- related finger rotation exercises and super reading skills.

Nishino Kozo, founder of the Nishino Ballet Group, in Shibuya. Now sixty-eight years old, Nishino was fifty when he started studying the martial arts of kenpo, or Japanese fencing, and aikido, which means the “way” (do) of “harmony” (ai) with ki. He rapidly developed a breathing technique meant to harness and circulate internal ki, and each week, several hundred students are, one by one, tossed or sent somersaulting about the room by Nishino’s seemingly effortless use of ki.