Hayashi Chujiro was a student of Usui Mikao, the founder of Reiki. Some of his students have greatly influenced the system of Reiki as it is taught today. By researching what is/has been taught by Hayashi Chujiro’s students it is possible to trace the evolution of teachings and beliefs that have created what is known as the system of Reiki today. Below are listed a number of some of his students (once again these are not all shinpiden students and some have not been verified).
Some of his students were:
Hayashi Chie
Yamaguchi Chiyoko
Hawayo Takata
Tatsumi
Matsui Shouoh
Hayashi Chie
The wife of Hayashi Chujiro. She continued on at her husband’s clinic after his death, becoming the 2nd President of the Hayashi Reiki Ryoho Kenkyu kai.
Yamaguchi Chiyoko
Yamaguchi Chiyoko
Yamaguchi Chiyoko studied with Hayashi Chujiro in 1938. Many of her family members were already practitioners by that time.
Unfortunately, Yamaguchi Chiyoko no longer had her certificates and other notes, as they were lost when she and her late husband fled Manchuria at the end of World War II. She only recently began teaching students with her son, Tadao; in a branch they called Jikiden Reiki. It appears she never learnt to become an official teacher but was taught the attunement from a relative who was hosting a course for Hayashi Chujiro.
She said that she learnt both shoden and okuden together over 5 consecutive days and this is what she teaches in her branch of Reiki today in Kyoto, Japan.
Hawayo Takata
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 practices. 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
Rick Bockner 1980
Barbara Brown 1979
Wanja Twan 1979
George Araki 1979
Patricia Ewing
Ursula Baylow
Mary McFadyen
Here are some excerpts from Hawayo Takata’s Diary:
Tatsumi
One of the 13 teacher students of Hayashi Chujiro. Tatsumi, trained in 1927 to become a teacher. Tatsumi did not appreciate the changes that Hayashi Chujiro had made and finally left in 1931. Tatsumi said he was initially taught in a class with 5 other students. He learnt 7 basic hand positions from Hayashi Chujiro before 1931. These were formulated to cover specific acupuncture points on the body.
In 1995, Dave King claims to have met Tatsumi in an out of the way village in Japan. Though Tatsumi had never taught these teachings he still had the paperwork. These included hand written notes from Chujiro Hayashi’s teachings and copies of the 4 traditional symbols. Dave King claims to have made copies of Tatsumi’s notes and symbols. He was also taught Tatsumi’s attunement, which he passed on to Rick Rivard who then taught it to students at the URRI in Vancouver, 1999. This attunement has become popular amongst practitioners. Today, Dave King denies having passed on the full information relating to the attunement (or transformation as he now calls it)
Matsui Shouoh
The only information we currently have about Matsui Shouoh is a 1928 Magazine Article translated by Amy. An original copy of the article is in the latest book by Frank Arjava Petter and Yamaguchi Tadao about Hayashi Chujiro and his Ryoho Shishin (manual).
There is an article written in 1928 by a Level 1 student of Hayashi Chujiro and explains the set up and concepts of what was taught in Japan at that time, just 2 years after Usui Mikao’s death.