Window Opener

Not since Anna set off for the court of the King of Siam had a simple schoolmarm received such an invitation. The Emperor of Japan wanted to hire an American lady to teach his eldest son English, and several important U.S. educators sent in the names of likely candidates. Finally the decision came in the form of a cable. "The Imperial Household," said the cable from Japan, "has decided on Vining (repeat) Vining."

Last week, in a chatty new book,* Mrs. Elizabeth Gray Vining, 49, told what happened to her after the message arrived. A tall, kindly Quaker from Philadelphia, she sailed for Japan on Oct. 1, 1946, took up her new duties within the palace moat exactly 17 days later. But she soon learned that her duties involved more than teaching English. "We want you," said the Emperor's Grand Steward, "to open windows on to a wider world for our Crown Prince."

Gandhi to Gettysburg.During the next four years, Elizabeth Vining tried to do just that, and in the process she became more intimate with Japan's royal family than any Westerner in history. She found the Emperor a "shy and sensitive man," the Empress a "comfortable, motherly figure." But her favorite royal personage was twelve-year-old Crown Prince Akihito himself--"a lovable-looking small boy, round-faced and solemn but with a flicker of humor in his eyes."

From the start, the Prince and Mrs. Vining got along. She had him as a pupil both in class and in private, and since she knew no Japanese, she had to think up some strange Occidental ways of teaching. She brought him the illustrated Book of Knowledge, acted out words for him, invented a tennis game to be played on paper. Gradually, as his vocabulary increased, he began to explore territory beyond "How are you today?" and "Is your cold better?" He wanted to know about Alexander Graham Bell, Gandhi and the U.N. In time, he read Carl Sandburg's Abe Lincoln Grows Up, learned the Gettysburg Address, and Mrs. Vining "entertained hopes that some day at a diplomatic dinner, he would be able to dazzle the American Ambassador by an apt quotation." By the time Mrs. Vining's four years were up, the Prince was reading Pilgrim's Progress, could chatter away fluently.

Jimmy & Snap. In four years, he also changed in other ways. At twelve he had been a stiff, lonely boy who lived in a big, cold house with no one except his retinue of chamberlains and servants to keep him company. Wherever he went the chamberlains followed, and he seemed unable to make the simplest decision without consulting them. To straightforward Mrs. Vining, that was no way for a boy to grow up, and she decided to do something about it.

In school she gave his entire class English names, began calling the Prince "Jimmy" ("No, I am Prince," he protested at first). She arranged to have his classmates visit him, taught them to play hide & seek, took them on picnics. She even made some progress in the matter of his retinue--"to the point that although [a] chamberlain still accompanied him to the school building, they parted and went inside by different doors!"

Gradually Mrs. Vining's influence spread to the rest of the imperial family. She gave English lessons to the Empress, taught the Princesses to sing Christmas carols, played "snap" with the Emperor. She took Akihito to meet General MacArthur ("Honorable Across the Moat"), driving him in her own car. Though she did not know it, she was opening another window for the Prince. "It will be recorded in our history," said a courtier, "[as] the first time that a Crown Prince of Japan has ridden alone with a Western lady, going to visit a Westerner."

To her Sorry . . ." One day in 1950, Mrs. Vining announced that it was time for her to go. The Prime Minister awarded her the Third Order of the Sacred Crown, and the members of the imperial family showered her with gifts--photographs, poems, silks and vases. But they apparently had no intention of forgetting Mrs. Vining. Months later, she received a series of messages from the Empress, delivered in Philadelphia in careful translation and with elaborate formality by an imperial emissary:

"1) Her Majesty feels lonesome that she has no longer your lesson of English.

"2) She gets your picture on her desk and thinks as if she were seeing you every day.

"3) She is now reading your book William Penn with much interest.

"4) Last year she recollected that you taught a Christmas carol to her . . . At that time you said that you would teach it again the next year, but, to her sorry, you have gone 'the next year.'"

*Windows for the Crown Prince; Lippincott; $4-

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