Tutor To Crown Prince

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31153, 1 September 1966, Page 16

Tutor To Crown Prince

A former tutor to the Crown Prince of Japan arrived in Christchurch yesterday to take up his post as a senior lecturer in the department of economics at the University of Canterbury.

Mr A. C, Rayner, a 28-vear-old Englishman, said his landlady had quite a lot to do with him being appointed tutor to Crown Prince Akihito.

Mr Rayner went to Japan in 1963 to lecture in economics and English language and literature at the University of Tokyo. “When the Crown Prince wanted a new English tutor it was the obvious thing to go to the University of Tokyo and inquire about the Englishmen there. At least, one of his gentlemen-in-waiting went.”

Mr Rayner’s name was one of those mentioned. “It was then a question of finding out whether I was a suitable character to be mixed up with the Imperial Family. They’re awfully Victorian about that sort of thing.” The inquiries reached his aristocratic landlady, who was known by the Crown Princess. “As soon as she said I was staying there, no other qualifications were required at all. So, instead of six weeks’ investigation, I got away with only an hour or so.” For the next two years Mr Rayner went to the Imperial Palace twice a week and chatted informally with the Crown Prince, who is now 32. There was no formal instruction:

the’sessions were to keep the Prince fluent in English to enable him to converse in the language with visiting dignitaries. What did they talk about? “Anything .... the Olympic Games, his wife and children, his parents, Japanese history. His main interest is in fish; he spends most of what spare time he has cutting them up, and has written learned papers about the classification of fish,” Mr Rayner’s subject is econ. ometrics. which he defined as the application of modern statistical techniques to applied economics and the investigation of modern statistical techniques when used on economic statistics.

He was educated at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and gained his bachelor of commerce degree with first class honours at Birmingham University, He studied for his master’s degree, specialising in econometrics, on a state scholarship, and after graduating in 1961 went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a Fulbright travel scholarship, staying there for a year as a visiting instructor. He spent the next year as a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, before going to the University of Tokyo.

Mr Rayner, who is married, will take courses in econometrics and statistics at the University of Canterbury.