Abstract

Japanese qigong research became active during the 1990's. In ancient Chinese, qigong was called dao-yin. In the beginning, the techniques of qigong were simpler and trainees merely stopped their breath during exercise. Presently, qigong is viewed as a kind of exercise for the health of the mind and body. "Qi" or "ki" is an important concept of qigong research and originates from ancient Chinese thought. The original meaning of the word is "movement of a cloud". In Japanese today, the word of qi/ki is ordinarily used as an expression of weather change, an activity of the body and soul, a natural phenomenon, etc. Ki as an ordinary word is often used for something intangible like ESP when it has paranormal meaning. Today, traditional Oriental medicine like acupuncture is accepted popularly in Japan as a kind of complementary and alternative medicine. In Oriental medicine, qi/ki is used on balance as a practical concept. It is not so important to discuss whether ki/qi has substance or not in a typical clinical environment. On the other, qi/ki in qigong is used as if it has physical substance. The concept of qigong was defined in China in the 1950's. Qigong is a generic term for various health methods and skills of martial arts, Buddhism, etc., therefore the number of kinds of qigong is huge and it is easy to establish a new qigong method. In the early 20th century, Reijutsu movement occurred in Japan. One of aims of Reijutsu is to restore health. Reijutsu uses various healing methods including laying-on-of-hands, direct hand touch and healing by religious rituals. Reijutsu practitioners visited Manchuria in China and lectured their techniques to Chinese. A qigong performance of emitting external qi is considered to be developed relatively recently and have influences of Mesmerism and Reijutsu. In modem Japanese studies, there is a consideration that the major effects of external qi can be explained by well-known psychological phenomena, e.g. suggestion. This is the most cautious scenario, and skeptics and many scientists outside of qigong research like it. In contract, there are more than several dozen researchers who assume the existence of physical substances of external qi and they have tried to measure some effects using various sensors of infrared rays, magnetic fields, etc. But, detections by sensors were rarely observed, and moreover the powers of detected signals were too small to cause events directly. On the other hand, there were reports on a "residual" property of external qi which suggests the existence of a substance. Therefore, they think that the concept of external qi is not so simple. In fact details of the concept of qi or external qi are still obscure. And the concept does not apply to all parapsychological phenomena, moreover, there is a difference of training methods between qigong and psi. But, it is very useful to study limited problems at present day.