After she turned 35, Miho Masui began to suffer from facial twitches.

She underwent surgery but it failed to suppress the symptoms and left an aftereffect: diplopia, or seeing two images of the same object.

But when she received acupuncture treatment at a clinic staffed by people with visual impairments of their own, she felt her symptoms alleviate.

Masui, now 52, wore a brilliant cherry blossom-themed kimono to her graduation this spring to receive her diploma--a major milestone toward reaching her dream of helping people with the same traditional needling technique that relieved her own suffering.

Masui used to work as a bar hostess under the name of “Sakura,” or cherry blossom.

“I want to shine again, now that I have changed from Sakura to Miho,” she said.

After six years of study, Masui, who lives in the capital’s Minato Ward, attended the ceremony on March 18 held at the vocational school Tokyo Therapeutic Institute, headquartered in Shinjuku Ward, and is now on track to open her own parlor this summer in the capital.

When she first set out on the path to this new career, she started from scratch and poured her heart and soul into it--just like she did for her last job, which was also a small business venture.

At the age of 26, while working at a duty-free shop in the Akihabara district, her twin sister asked her to quit and open a members-only hostess club together in Tokyo’s swanky Ginza district.

The club was a hit. It became so popular that they had to put chairs on the stair landing.

She later used her collective experiences as a hostess to write a best-selling book on how to tell the difference between competent and incompetent men.

But because she has a low alcohol tolerance, it was painstaking for her to work from 6 p.m. until dawn entertaining clients. Masui felt she was not the right fit for the job, but the single mother kept working so that she could send her daughter to study in Britain.

In 2014, as her daughter’s senior high school graduation approached, Masui felt a strong urge for change.

She enrolled at the professional school in April 2015 so she could find a new line of work and help relieve the pain of others just like how her own was soothed.

She studied acupuncture and moxibustion therapies, and acupressure massage for the first three years.
Masui committed seriously to her studies. She would throw a lab coat on over her tracksuit and travel back and forth between the school and her home. She had no time for putting on makeup before class and declined invitations to drinking parties.

At first, she struggled to find the acupuncture points due to her diplopia. But thanks to training given by an instructor who had a visual impairment, she learned how to find acupuncture points using her fingertips to feel out dents and rough surfaces on the skin.

During practical training, she proved to be a natural at putting nervous patients’ minds to rest. As she wiped their skin with alcohol, she would make them laugh by saying things like, “See, it smells like booze. Try to relax like you are in a bar.”

In 2018, Masui enrolled in two courses: one to learn judo-seifuku therapy, so she could treat broken or dislocated bones, and another to become an instructor for acupuncture, moxibustion and massage techniques. She would study for stretches of 12 hours straight.

Between classes, she learned judo at Kodokan, the headquarters of the martial art in Tokyo, and was eventually granted the rank of “shodan,” the lowest degree of black belt. She repeatedly suffered from dislocations and sprains to master bone-setting techniques the hard way.

“She asked many questions and was an overachiever,” recalled Yukihide Hayakawa, 43, an instructor at the judo-seifuku course.

Masui is now qualified as an acupuncturist, a practitioner of the traditional Chinese medicine moxibustion, a massage therapist, an instructor of these techniques, and on top of all that, a judo-seifuku specialist.

She is now busy preparing to open a small parlor in a 50-square-meter space in Tokyo’s Roppongi district this summer to provide massages, acupuncture and other treatments.

She intends to hire the visually impaired acupuncturists who relieved her pain and taught her needling techniques.

“Whether they can see or not, I want to shine with them,” Masui said.