George Edward Luckman Gauntlett (b. Dec. 4, 1868, Swansea, Wales; d. July 29, 1956, Tokyo, Japan) was a Welsh educator.
After completing his primary education in his hometown, he went on to Brighton for his secondary education, and to London where he entered a Music College. It is also said that he studied architecture, electricity, surveying, the arts, etc.
In spite of his parents' objections, he went to the United States of America at the age of 20. From there he went to Canada, where he joined a church.
Went to Japan in 1890 or 1891 as a missionary for his Canadian church. In Japan he taught English at several schools in the Tokyo-area (Tokyo Commercial College, Azabu Middle School, Chiba Middle School) before he resettled to Okayama, where he taught at the Nr. 6 College. Four years later, he moved on, this time to Kanazawa, where he taught English at the Nr. 4 College. Six years later, he went to Yamaguchi, where he taught at the Yamaguchi Commercial College (stayed there for 8 years). From 1919 to 1936 he taught English and other subjects (among them Latin) in Tokyo at Rikkyō University.
He is credited with introducing to Japan the mothods on how to teach commercial English, shorthand, calligraphy.
While in Okayama, he also taught his students Esperanto, and was one of the founding members of the Japanese Esperanto Society in 1906.
Being musically gifted too (he was related to the composers William Henry Monk and Henry Gauntlett), he was an organist at the Hongo Central Church, which boasted Japan's biggest pipe organ at the time. He taught Sunday school too.
Gauntlett married Tsune Yamada (the sister of composer Kosaku Yamada) in 1898. It is said that theirs was the first officially registered marriage between a Japanese and a foreign citizen.[1] They had six children, their eldest son, J. O. Gauntlett, taught English at Aoyama Gakuin University and was also a flutist. J. O. Gauntlett also gave a set of lectures on teaching English as a foreign language at Nanzan University in Tokyo that were edited by James A. Noonan and then published as a book by MacMillan Press.[2]
He is a recipient of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 5th class.
In his old age he took Japanese citizenship and changed his name to Ganto Takeshi 岸登烈 (which is a transliteration of his English name's pronunciation, and can be read in Japanese as "Gantoretto" too).
He died at his home in Tokyo of a heart attack, and is buried at the Tama Cemetery.
Rainichi Yoseijinmei Jiten revised and enlarged edition, by Hiroshi Takeuchi, Nichigai Associates, 1995