GB’S ANNIVERSARY SPEECH at the Party on 21 September, 2019 

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Good evening. The best thing about this kind of occasion is that it brings so many old friends and acquaintances together. I hope you are all having a great time here today. Special thanks to Toshihiro Tanaka and everyone else who organized this gathering here today. 

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I would like especially to thank you, President Hiroike, for honouring this occasion with your kind attendance, and also for your very kind and thoughtful gifts. 

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Sir, I am standing here now because your dear late father President Sentaro Hiroike in 1968 invited me to come and teach at Reitaku University, and I am forever deeply grateful to him for choosing me. 

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I originally came to Japan for just two years, but suddenly I find I have stayed for fifty years. 

And why did I stay? Because I came to love Japan and Japanese culture and Japanese people, the wonderful kindly people I met in Reitaku and then all over Japan, including the Okada and Fujita families in Tokushima, and the Yoshida family of Meitoku Gijuku in Kochi, and many others. And of course because I found in Japan my dear wife Kyoko here. She has looked after me so well for over 40 years – and that is not an easy job, I can tell you! 

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I feel I’m very lucky to be living here in these peaceful times. I remember in 1975 when our Queen Elizabeth made a visit to Japan, the very moment she met your late Emperor Showa at the Akasaka Palace. The way they looked at each other, into each other’s eyes, as they shook hands, was for me an unforgettable historic moment, as these two ancient monarchies met each other. I too, an ordinary Englishman, have often felt that same long and beautiful alliance of peoples. Nowadays on the train 

in Japan, when Japanese people, both young and old, catch eyes with me and we smile without a word being spoken, again I feel that heart- moving bond between me and Japan. It’s like a kind of spiritual love. 

 

I feel thankful to so many people. First, I thank my parents for making me very strong with a healthy open-air life and climbing mountains, and also at home teaching me how to make things, how to be creative, including making family drama together during my childhood. 

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Here in Japan I am also deeply grateful to the late Professors Takeyuki So and Zenjiro Otsuka, and also to my dear friend and supporter Professor Shumpei Tanaka. These wonderful pioneers laid the firm foundations of English drama activity in Reitaku. 

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And then all these dramas have been actually staged and performed by you old members and current members of Reitaku University English Drama Group and ESS and Meitoku International Players. Because of you, I have discovered so many great works of drama literature, not only Shakespeare, but other great writers spread across two thousand years of world literature, from the ancient Greeks to modern times – all because of you, of your extremely hard work year after year. Made by you. I’ve said this before, and I say it again: it is possible for you people to make drama any time, but as director, I cannot make any drama at all without you, the actors. Without you, I can do nothing. So, I do thank you all from the depths of my soul for enriching my life so much by making so many dramas with me! You are my life and my history. 

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I also want to thank my nephew Merwyn Torikian for continuing the drama work for thirty years in Reitaku with such outstanding productions. I am just a director, but I now call Merwyn a Master Director. [If you saw his King Lear last year or Cyrano de Bergerac the year before, you will know what I mean.] I also thank Merwyn’s son Kazuki John, for continuing my drama work at Meitoku, believing that soon he/you will become a super master director sooner or later! Yes, Kazuki? Yes or yes? 

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Drama is a wonderful thing. People get together, work hard and have fun together making the drama, and then they give this to their audience, a beautiful cultural gift. Working together and giving. It’s something... marvellous..beyond words to describe. 

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Latest of all, the play today, all those people who worked together to stage ‘Shunkan’, performed this afternoon (Please gather here). Thanks especially to you, Mr. Yamada, it has been such a moving experience working with this extraordinary group of old members and young members and even a few recent members from Meitoku International Club. I do apologize to you all for giving you so much hard work, and I do thank you very, very much for your great efforts. 

 

Well, it seems that after 50 years, I am somehow still here, a sort of antique, still making so many people work hard. So, when you get tired of me, please take me to Kikaiga-Shima and leave me there with Shunkan. But if you do take me there, I warn you, I am sure to find a way to escape and come back here to Reitaku campus, which I love so much. 

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And finally, my motto: Take the best from the past, and make it part of the future. 

Thank you very much!