was a Japanese businessman, author and pseudoscientist who claimed that human consciousness could affect the molecular structure of water. His 2004 book The Hidden Messages in Water was a New York Times best seller.
Starting in 1999, Emoto published several volumes of a work entitled Messages from Water, containing photographs of ice crystals and accompanying experiments such as that of the "rice in water 30 day experiment."
Biography
Emoto was born in Yokohama and graduated from Yokohama Municipal University after taking courses in International Relations. He worked in the Nagoya Office (Central Japan Office) of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, then founded the International Health Medical company in 1986. In 1989, he received exclusive rights to market the Magnetic Resonance Analyzer, a device patented by Ronald Weinstock (Patent 5,592,086), which was alleged to be able to detect the magnetic field around a human hair, for example, and diagnose almost any disease. He renamed it the "Vibration-o-Meter," became an operator himself, and started a business dealing in vibrations.
He was President Emeritus of the International Water For Life Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Oklahoma City in the United States. In 1992, he became a Doctor of Alternative Medicine at the Open International University for Alternative Medicine in India, a fraudulent college that sold illegitimate degrees and was later shut down.
Ideas
Emoto claimed that water was a "blueprint for our reality" and that emotional "energies" and "vibrations" could change its physical structure. His water crystal experiments consisted of exposing water in glasses to various words, pictures, or music, then freezing it and examining the ice crystals' aesthetic properties with microscopic photography. He co-conducted and co-authored the work with Takashige Kizu of Emoto's own International Health Medical (IHM) General Institute, and Dean Radin and Nancy Lund of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which is on Stephen Barrett's Quackwatch list of questionable organizations.
Commentators have criticized Emoto for insufficient experimental controls and for not sharing enough details of his experiments with the scientific community. He has also been criticized for designing his experiments in ways that permit manipulation or human error. Biochemist and Director of Microscopy at University College Cork William Reville wrote, "It is very unlikely that there is any reality behind Emoto's claims."
Emoto's book The Hidden Messages in Water was a New York Times best seller. Publishers Weekly described Emoto's later work, The Shape of Love, as "mostly incoherent and unsatisfying".
Emoto's ideas appeared in the movies Kamen Rider: The First and What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Publications
Books
- English edition:
- English edition:
- English edition:
- English edition:
- The True Power of Water (Book): Healing and Discovering Ourselves; Beyond Words Pub, 2005. .
- The Hidden Messages in Water; Beyond Words Pub, 2004.
See also
- Water memory
- Polywater
- Water (2006 film)
- Pseudoscience
- Quantum mysticism