Mrs. Vining & the Prince

The members of the U.S. Education Mission were ushered into a room in the palace where there were no chairs. Everybody stood around awkwardly while Hirohito asked elaborate questions about the weather. Then the Emperor came to the point: Could the Mission recommend an American tutor for the Crown-Prince? Says Chairman George D. Stoddard (now president of the University of Illinois): "I gulped a few times on that one. Then I said, yes indeed, we could all think of someone."

A little later, over tea and cakes, it was the Japs who were surprised when Stoddard thought to ask Hirohito's master of ceremonies Hidenari Terasaki whether the Emperor wanted a man or woman tutor. (Jap princes are traditionally removed from feminine influence, even their own mother's, at an early age.) Says Stoddard: "Terasaki thumped his teacup down on the mahogany table, really baffled. When he returned after consulting Hirohito, he said the Emperor wanted a woman."

Last week Tsugu-no-Miya Akihito ("The Prince of the August Succession and Enlightened Benevolence") learned the name of his new tutor: Mrs. Elizabeth Gray Vining of Philadelphia, Pa. Twelve-year-old* Akihito will meet Mrs. Vining some time this fall when she flies to Japan for her first visit and a year's stay. She will be given a small salary, a house, a car and servants.

Mrs. Vining, a Quaker graduate of Germantown Friends School and Bryn Mawr (cum laude), once taught English at a girls' school, library science at the University of North Carolina. In recent years she has written historical romances and biographies for teenagers. A childless widow, she publishes under her maiden name, Elizabeth Janet Gray.

Several hundred U.S. teachers, hearing of the Emperor's offer (TIME, April 8), had applied for the job. Mrs. Vining was not one of them. The American Friends Service Committee told her it was a chance to serve the cause of peace, asked permission to suggest her name to Dr. Stoddard. Says she: "I did not see how I could refuse." Stoddard proposed two names, Mrs. Vining's and that of a teacher in Hawaii. Mrs. Vining won out.

No Anna. The Emperor had ruled out ex-WAVES, WACs and officers' wives. He also wanted no zealous young reformers, preferred "a mature person of 50 years or more." But Stoddard told him: "Many good teachers in the U.S. are much less old than that." Brunette, fortyish Mrs. Vining, already tired of newspaper comparisons to Anna and the King of Siam, says she is "considerably older than Anna was , but younger than the Emperor had in mind."

Busy boning up on Japan, Mrs. Vining is also collecting children's classics to take with her. Says she: "I will teach the Crown Prince the stories every American schoolchild knows, stories of Washington and of Longfellow and of American thoughts and ideals. The emphasis will be on a world without war, and nations working together for peace."

Akihito already has a male instructor, Reginald H. Blyth, a Briton interned in Japan during the war, who has been teaching the prince English since last December, thinks Mrs. Vining may be "disappointed with his limited vocabulary." (Akihito learned the future tense only last week.) Says Blyth: "If only she could develop initiative in him. He is too passive."

*By Japanese count, 14. In Japan, infants are reckoned one year old the day they are born, add a year every New Year's Day, like U.S. racehorses. Akjhito was therefore two on Jan. 1, 1934, though he was born on Dec. 23, 1933.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.