Interview
Mario Rinvolucri
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On Japan
A newly qualified teacher is about to go to Japan for her first TEFL job. What reference
books should she take?
I think these two books will help her begin to get her head round a way of doing things and
a belief system that she has never dreamt of. They are:
- "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon" which gives an entry into Japanese formalism, delicacy
of perception, sensuality, clarity, concreteness and withering contempt for things disliked.
- "The Enigma of Japanese Power", by Karel van Wolferen, which describes the complex working
of a society that manages to combine being super-modern with continuing to live in a 'mura'
(village) state of mind.
Insights from both books might help the teacher cope with the bewildering stuff which will hit
her in her first Japanese school.
How many times have you visited and presented in Japan? What impressions do you get from
the ELT scene here?
I have been invited to three JALT conventions and have done two round-the-archipelago JALT
tours. But actually I have learnt most of what I know about Japan by working with Japanese
women students from Gifu in the context of The Cambridge Academy, in UK and with young Japanese
managers in the Executive English Division of Pilgrims, again in UK.
My impressions of the EFL scene in Japan? First, there are several EFL 'scenes' in Japan. There
is the typical JACET-style applied linguistics classroom in a university, there are the
language and literature classes in the universities, there are the junior high classes, which
are quite different from the junior high clubs which are again different from the juku (cram
schools) to which half of this age group goes twice a week. My impressions are too varied to
be summed up in a few words.
How similar or different are Japanese students to European ones?
The question seems to imply a homogeneity among European students and among Japanese ones. In
Finland when you have four people at dinner then main speaker will be the silence, in Italy,
at a dinner table with four people, five of them will be speaking at once, while in Greece, six
out of the four will be trying to make themselves heard! I know Japan less well then Europe but
I guess the reactions of Aomori province students may well be different from those people from
Okinawa some 2000kms to the South of them and with plenty blue water in between. One thing I
did find with the college students from Gifu, studying in UK was that their emotionality almost
overwhelmed me. They took the first month of intensive work to warm up, but my God, once they
were warmed up the things they wanted to talk about and their affective openness amazed me.
Those girls made Italian woman seem reserved and cold. Yeah, of course they were abroad and
at least partly out of the Japanese rule system…. But all the same… wow, what
emotional power!
On Mario
You have been with Pilgrims for over 25 years. You never once thought of pursuing your
career elsewhere?
Good question. You could call it lack of imagination!
26 years with Pilgrims.
37 years married to Sophie.
36 years as Lola's father.
32 years as Martin's father.
14 years as Bruno's father.
A long term stick-in-the-mud!
Where do you see yourself in five years time?
Five years into my 30 year plan, which kicked in this January. I intend to retire at 90, so
I am currently in mid career. By 2005 I hope to have produced four more CDROMS to follow on
from Mindgame, which Clarity in Hong Kong brought out last month. The work on CDROMs
puts me in touch with professionals in their late twenties and early thirties while the users
are people of today like my Bruno, who will shortly be 14.
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