Ukio George Yorioka was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 19, 1914. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1940, majoring in Electrical Engineering. He then went to Tokyo, Japan, to work for Nippon (Japan) Victor Company, Ltd. (NIVICO). In 1958, he passed the Government Examination and became one of the first Consulting Engineers in Japan.

Frater Yorioka established the Grand Lodge of Japan together with his wife Setsuko (deceased) in 1977, and retired from consulting engineering work. (He was 62 years old at the time.) He was installed as Grand Master by Past Imperator Ralph M. Lewis in 1978, in San Jose, during a World Convention, and has been the Grand Master ever since. Frater Yorioka is also one of the Directors on the Board of the Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC.

Frater Yorioka has constructed a two-story “AMORC Building” with his personal financing, which includes a Rosicrucian Temple on the second floor, and the Grand Lodge office and personal quarters on the first floor. The Consecration Ceremony was conducted on May 5, 2002, under the leadership of Imperator Christian Bernard with the assistance of Grand Master Yorioka. The Imperator placed the Golden Orb on the Shekinah, which became the symbol of Consecration.

Discourse
When the AMORC World Convention was held in 1978 in San Jose, I presented my first discourse as Grand Master a day or two after then-Imperator Ralph M. Lewis installed me into that office during the World Convention. So I am especially thankful to the Rosicrucian teachings and the Cosmic for permittmg me to make this presentation twenty-six years later at this same lectern, in good health, since I am now eighty-nine years old.

After my late wife, Setsuko, and I succeeded in establishing the Grand Lodge of Japan and began its operations in 1977, we were really shocked to find that the Rosicrucian Order’s paid advertisements were declined by all magazine publishers in Japan. They claimed that the Rosicrucian Order was an occult organization, citing some books written by a Japanese university professor covering the “occult” activities practiced by Rosicrucians in the Middle Ages. So I met with the president of the Japanese Magazine Advertisement Association and explained the true nature of our Order’s activities to him. This solved the problem; he approved the ads and this obstacle was removed. However, this incident demonstrated what we were up against in planting the Rosicrucian sapling tree in Japan, and we kept this fact in our minds in planning the future growth of the Order in Japan.

Nevertheless, the magazine ads were a great success, bringing us a great number of new members. This was especially true of ads appearing in the Japanese-language version of Reader’s Digest magazine. Eventually, however, this magazine stopped publishing its Japanese edition, and we lost the biggest source of new members, and with a serious recession affecting the Japanese economy, we continued to lose active members. Of course, we resorted to various means of public relations activities, such as public lecture courses sponsored by nationwide magazines, short-wave radio broadcasts over a six﷓month period, etc., and these efforts, along with a gradually improving economy, eventually paid off in more members.

Also, using my personal financing, I rebuilt my house, enlarging it into a two-story building devoted to AMORC’s activities, with the AMORC Temple on the second floor and the Grand Lodge offices and my personal quarters on the first floor. In May, 2002, Imperator Christian Bernard kindly came to Tokyo to conduct a Temple Consecration Ritual, at which time he placed the Golden Orb on our Temple’s Shekinah. Thus, I believe I have constructed a solid foundation for our Grand Lodge, and the next Grand Master will be able to make it a full﷓fledged Grand Lodge.

So Mote It Be!