Hawayo Takata
Hawayo Takata was one of the 13 students of Hayashi Chujiro. She was a first generation American to Japanese immigrant parents who lived in Hawaii. She married in 1930 and had two daughters before her husband tragically died in 1935.
On a trip to Japan, Hawayo Takata studied with Hayashi Chujiro from 1936 to 1938 and was the first to bring Hayashi Chujiro's teachings to the West. For 40 years she employed the method of storytelling to teach people about the system she called Reiki and its history.
On one of about 20 audiotapes that John Harvey Gray had made during her classes, Hawayo Takata discusses meeting practitioners of Usui Mikao's teachings in Japan. She said that she actually went to Japan to teach her system of Reiki and while there spoke to these practitioners. What they taught, she explained, was highly complex and required years of training and was closely intertwined with religious practises. She felt that their approach was inappropriate for the West.
Before she died in 1980 she had 22 Reiki Masters to carry on her teachings. They are listed below:
Virginia Samdahl 1976
Ethel Lombardi 1976
John Harvey Gray October 1976
Dorothy Baba 1976
Bethel Phaigh
Harry Kuboi 1977
Fran Brown January 1979
Barbara McCullough (it is not verified that she was #8)
Kay Yamashita (one of Hawayo Takata’s sisters)
Iris Ishikuro (Hawayo Takata’s cousin)
Phyllis Lei Furumoto April 1979
Shinobu Saito May 1980
Barbara Weber Ray September 1979
Beth Gray October 1979
Paul Mitchell November 1979
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