Naoe Naganuma, who had graduated from Tokyo Higher Commercial School (currently Hitotsubashi University), once attended a lecture by Harold E. Palmer, a British linguist visiting Japan as an English education advisor to the Japanese Ministry of Education.
He was deeply impressed with Palmer's lecture, and this was the beginning of a friendship between them. Naoe Naganuma learned about Palmer's teaching method called "English Education as a Foreign Language" and adopted it to create his own Japanese teaching method. After Palmer had established an English teaching institute in the Ministry of Education, he took a post as president of the institute, and Naoe Naganuma as manager.
Later, given a recommendation by Palmer, Naganuma became an instructor of Japanese at the American Embassy.