Western Medicine as Uncivilized Method

Healing Art for Tomorrow Part Ⅱ
Written by Mokichi Okada, 1943

I received the letter dated from the woman who performs Johrei as my disciple. I tell you the contents as it is here.

Dear Mr Okada,

I would like to tell you an interesting story. It seems that a military physician will visit me from Kyoto soon. He wants to see me how to perform Johrei. Let me explain what happened. It was one month ago. A twenty-seven-year-old soldier came to see me from Kyoto. He was injured the spinal cord by multiple tanks that instantly killed about fifteen other soldiers. He had a narrow escape from death and admitted himself to the Red Cross Hospital. He was said to have absolute rest for a year. As for his symptoms, he had a fever in the part from the base of the neck to the spinal cord, whose size is just of a palm. He also had no strength in his left three fingers and couldn’t squeeze the towel. Even though he had only such symptoms, the physician took serous fluid from the bottom of his spinal cord for the examination of myelitis. That gave him terrible suffering and pain. He felt as if the tanks turned around in the head. He felt pain and suffering so much that he asked the physician to stop it. However, the physician immediately scolded him and said, “If I stop it, you will die!” In this way, he had such a terrible experience. Despite that, there were no abnormalities in the examination results.

Nevertheless, the physician tried to take serous fluid again by drilling a hole in his skull. Hearing that, the soldier’s heart was almost in his mouth. Just three days before the examination was done, he came to see me. His father is a colonel and still on the battlefield. After he received Johrei once, the fever went down by half. It completely went down on the third day. His headache had also gone. The left hand that got smaller became normal and the nails that stopped growing started to grow again. He regained strength in his left hand as before. His pain had almost gone in a weak and he got better enough to return his work in a month. Since he became not good to work as a soldier, he was invalided. He would like to return his original work. He told me that he just wondered why he, who was in a serious condition of absolute rest for 1 year, could regularly visit me in Hyogo from Kyoto and had recovered enough to work in a month. Then he told his story to the physician. The physician said to him, “I take no responsibility for that. A strange thing happened. You got recovered, indeed. You have no abnormality but that is very strange. Your symptom shouldn’t be healed in a month. In any case, can you take me to the place you received treatment? I want to talk to her. Please get her consent to meet her.” In my opinion, he just had internal bleeding and therefore, he had a fever. Nevertheless, the physician gave him excessive treatments and suffered him very much.
30 June 1942

There are countless examples like this. Since I was touched by this story, I especially took it up. A brave man, who bet his life for the nation and played an active part in the front line, was given too much pain. Nevertheless, that pain was worthless. Furthermore, he almost had the skull drilled. I know that the military physician was honest. He just tried to examine the patient even if giving him such great pain. This fact shows very clearly how childish medical diagnose is and what a cruel consequence it brings. The military physician tried to examine the soldier by making a hole in his spinal cord and even his skull. On the contrary, my disciples can diagnose with myelitis in a minute. Besides, the soldier apparently didn’t suffer from myelitis as he recovered so quickly when he received Johrei in certain parts of the body. Nevertheless, the physician said that he would take a year to cure and had to have an absolute rest. Even if he had rest as he was told, we doubt very much if he could recover in a year. Considering that fact, we cannot deny that medicine has a poor ability to diagnose diseases and its method is uncivilised. Thinking how many people, who suffer from such disasters as the soldier’s, have no choice but to give up and accept their situation, I just gaze up to the sky and take a long breath.

Translated by N.H.