"Doing Very Well"

'Doing Very Well'

When Elizabeth Gray Vining left for Japan to become tutor to its Crown Prince, U.S. newspapers wondered whether Akihito would learn distaff democracy at her knee. Last week Mrs. Vining sent the U.S. an informal report on her first two months in Tokyo. One between-the-lines conclusion: it might take a long time.

Despite the glamorized buildup to her job (a favorite newspaper comparison: Anna and the King of Siam), Mrs. Vining sees Akihito in private only one hour a week. A Japanese, Professor Hiroshi Kikuchi, gives the Prince most of his English lessons, which take seven of his 27 schoolroom hours (the Prince spends only four hours a week on Japanese).

Mrs. Vining's main job is to teach five classes a week at the peers' and peeresses' schools--two grim and chilly buildings. At the girls' school, says Mrs. Vining, "You have to shout against the noise from the other classes and the people passing in the corridors. There is no electric light [and no heat]. . . . The floors, of rough wood, are grimy with dust from soldiers' feet over the years. The classrooms are like box stalls. . . ."

A Quaker with faith in her work, Mrs. Vining refuses to let inconveniences like these get her down. When the cold got too much for her, she sent home for ski boots. Though she is cut off from U.S. Army post exchanges and can't even get her hair done there, Mrs. Vining says: "I'm doing very well." She is grateful to her Japanese hosts for a ten-room house, a 1940 Plymouth, a secretary and a chauffeur.

Back home in Philadelphia, Mrs. Vining, a widow, used to write historical novels for children. In her spare time in Tokyo, she has been trying her hand at a different kind of book--rewriting the English texts to the level of her Japanese pupils.

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