Saturday, April 16, 2005

PERSONALITY PROFILE

By VIVIENNE KENRICK

A schoolboy evacuee from London to North Wales during World War II, Christopher Powell said he "fell in love with the land and language of some of my forefathers." Born in Brazil, where his father worked for a British bank, he has Anglo-Welsh antecedents from his father, and Anglo-Scottish from his mother. An interest in language may have been sparked in his boyhood in Wales, where he learned to pronounce the place name that begins Llanfairpwllgwayng and carries on to a total of 58 letters.

Christopher Powell attended Rutlish Grammar School "just ahead of the arrival there of John Major" and St. John's College Oxford "well ahead of Tony Blair."

After the war, at 17 he went on a visit to France, and "suddenly realized that the people around me were actually speaking in French. That was a very important moment for me," he said.

Powell attended Rutlish Grammar School in southwest London "just ahead of the arrival there of John Major" and St. John's College Oxford "well ahead of Tony Blair." He studied French and Spanish "with some extras" at both places. After graduating from Oxford he became a librarian looking after French and Spanish books at the University of London library. "I felt that wasn't sufficiently stimulating," he said. "I decided to go off to Spain and live by teaching English." He spent two years instructing adults and children, and found he enjoyed teaching his mother tongue.

"I applied for a British Council-sponsored job at the University of Baghdad, and had an exciting time and some dangerous adventures there," Powell continued. "I traveled to Petra, Esfahan and Istanbul, then returned to enjoy North Wales again." He took his TESL qualification at Bangor University College. Algeria and the Sahara came next. London followed, with the International Language Center, which brought him to Japan in 1968. He arrived on Shakespeare's birthday, April 23.

Powell moved from Osaka to Kobe, to Tokyo, and back to Kobe, where he met his future wife, "a very romantic meeting under the cherry blossoms of Yoshino." He became professor at the Konan Women's University in 1979, and was for three years head of the junior college's English department.

Although his activities at Konan are varied, Powell has worked with his colleagues every year for 22 years for the university's Shakespeare Festival. This 40-year-old program "generates much enthusiasm among present and potential students of the English department." Past students too attend the festival to re-enact some scenes they performed when they were undergraduates. Powell said: "In spite of the difficulties resulting from smaller student numbers, and the shorter exposure to English our students now get in high school, we still find great enthusiasm and some genuine talent among our players every year. They get so much out of it, not only understanding the old Shakespearean English and its beauty, but also experiencing the dynamics of a play. They work both as individuals and with each other, making many friendships in the process."

Konan Women's University makes the twist from Shakespeare's day by having women play all the parts, including those for men. When his students were performing "Hamlet," Powell noted that "this is a formidable play for any group of actors to undertake. There is much need for courage on the part of the women students in far-off Japan to give convincing performances." When he was working on "Romeo and Juliet," he emphasized the play's "poignancy, with its freshness and waste of young lives." Of "As You Like It" he commented that "words dominate the action . . . the 'tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything.' . . . The gentle English countryside provides the setting for an elegant mosaic of human relationships to be discussed and savored." He passes on to his students his own poetic appreciation of "the golden world."

From teaching practical English, Powell widened his courses to include British culture and society and British arts. He has produced his own books, and helped arrange courses for Konan students to attend at the University of York. In this, his final year at Konan before retirement, he is lecturing on Shakespeare in the graduate school. In retirement he hopes to give more time to his multiple hobbies, ranging from Japanese arts and antiques, temples and gardens, music and photography, old clocks and watches, "and finding new joys to uncover in Britain. But I shall certainly miss Konan and the students," he said.

The 40th Konan Women's University Shakespeare Festival will present "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Ashiya Luna Hall on April 22 at 5 p.m. and on April 23 at 2:30 p.m. Entrance is free.

We welcome your opinions. Click to send a message to the editor.