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In the summer of 1997, Shiya Fleming,
a friend and student of mine, took several close-ups of the Usui memorial
so we could translate the text ourselves.
With the help of Emiko Arai, I pieced them together in Corel Draw to get this composite photo. There were about 36 photos to choose from so we took the shots with the best detail. To give you an example of one of them, look at the shot of the lower left corner, which is a bit difficult to read. I have a couple blowups here so you can see the text, depending on how fast you can download the graphics. If you can read Kanji, especially the pre-1947 version, you might want the larger file. We learned a few new things, such as the fact the memorial was erected in February, 1927, a month before Usui's son erected the family grave stone. We discovered that retired Rear Admiral Ushida (also pronounced Guida according to my friends) wrote the text for the tablet. He was Usui-san's successor as head of the Reiki Society. Also, we learned that Dr. Masayuki Okada, a professor, was the editor of the inscription. He may have been a student of Usui-sensei's as well. The translation, a fairly literal version, is located at another of my pages. Melissa Riggal used the photos above to create a modern day Japanese version of the text, and has placed it at the Usui-Do web site. This should help those who can read kanji, but not the pre-1947 version. |
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