Hi mj and welcome 🙂

Maya is a name I came across, along with Yamato, when researching CMI guitars (a “sticky” that can be found on the main category here). Every Maya, Yamato and some CMI electrics I’ve seen have featured terrible hardware and ply bodies married to inexplicably good necks. Putting Tahara into the search found me some new, and useful, information here:
http://www.ezfolk.com/forums/forum16/762-1.html

Scroll past all the “I really like your playing” stuff to get the useful info near the end. Maya was a retailer that had cheap stuff made in Japan but also bought from better quality suppliers and your Tahara-san was a highly respected luthier in that country. Hope that helps, and thanks for adding another piece to my jigsaw 😀