Concept
Christopher Belton (born 25 August 1955 in Hackney, London, UK) is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and a Japanese/English translator working from Yokohama, Japan. Belton first moved to Japan in 1978 with his Japanese wife, and apart from four years in London between 1983 and 1987, he has lived in Japan ever since. Turning freelance in 1991, Belton has published more than 60 books as an author, more than 70 as a translator, and is well known in Japan for his contributions to literature, English learning and the publishing industry. Born and brought up in Hackney, North London, Belton attended Queensbridge Infants School, Gayhurst Junior School and Upton House Secondary School. Excelling at music, he won a scholarship to receive individual tuition from the Royal Academy of Music at the age of fourteen, and also played second trumpet for the London Schools Symphony Orchestra for a brief period in 1969. He spent two years with the chorus of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden as a juvenile, during which he appeared in the operas Peter Grimes, Tosca, Don Carlos, Don Giovanni, Falstaff, Norma and others, and was part of a three-week tour of West Berlin and Munich undertaken by the Royal Opera House in April 1970. He also appeared in Belasario, staged by the students of the Royal Academy of Music, at the Sadler's Wells Opera House in 1972. Belton then turned his attention to modern music and played the guitar in several unsuccessful rock bands, occasionally moonlighting as a session musician, before becoming disillusioned with the music business in 1975 and moving from London to Dartmouth, Devon, with his wife, Michiyo, where they lived for the subsequent three years. Belton and his family moved to Japan in 1978, where he taught English in Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures. They moved back to the UK in 1983, where he started working for the London office of JTB (Japan Travel Bureau.) He was transferred to the Tokyo office in 1987 and worked there until he resigned to become a freelance translator in 1991.