JAPANESE PRINCE AN APT PUPIL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 11, 28 March 1947, Page 6

JAPANESE PRINCE AN APT PUPIL

AMERICAN TUTORS IMPRESSIONS TEACHING SON OF NIPPON NOBILITY The little boy who may inherit the throne of Japan—if there still is a throne at that time—has won the “genuine affection” of his American teacher. Mrs Elizabeth Gray Vining has been on the job just two months. The first American and first woman ever to instruct a member of the Japanese imperial family said in an interview that she found considerable talent in little Crown Prince Akihito. The heir apparent to the Japanese crown recently observed his 14th birthday. As one of the Prince’s three English tutors, Mrs Vining meets him twice a week in the chilly, barren schoolroom at Kogane, site of the new peer’s school, several miles outside Tokyo. She also teaches English to 127 other sons and daughters of Japan’s nobility and says these youngsters seem much the same as children in other lands.

Mrs Vining expects in time to give her students the full background of American history and customs and the principles of democracy which will alter radically their once-predestined lives. Although she avoids comparisons, it is apparent that she regards the Crown Prince as her star pupil, but he had to earn that distinction without any special privileges because of rank. Sense of Humour “I am genuinely fond of him,” she says simply. “He is alert, intent, and has a good approach to his studies. He also has a sense of humour.” Enthusiastic and intent toward her job, Mrs Vining insists that she is no modern “Anna of Siam.” Referring to that famous English tutor of another generation and kingdom, she says, “The circumstances are entirely different and so are the people.” When Mrs Vining arrived in Yokohama in mid-October, Japanese officials failed to meet her and she had to get an American friend to give her a ride to Tokyo. Since then, however, she says she has been treated “wonderfully.” There has been no evidence of unfriendliness by other teachers, nor, she says, has there been any resentment by her boy pupils, despite their early training in the belief that women were incompetent. Lives Near Tokyo The tall widow left.her home in Germantown, Philadelphia, on three weeks’ notice. Her new home is a comfortable two-storey stuccoed house in the Tokyo suburbs. The Japanese Government supplies her with household servants, a secretary and an automobile.

The occidental-style house, once occupied by an official of the imperial household ministry, is one of a group which escaped American bombing. For her high-born pupils, Mrs Vining has a school which is barely furnished and which has become increasingly cold as winter advances. “The children have an amazing resistance,” she says. “Some days I have been quite chilly even with clothing, but the Crown Prince and the others don’t seem to mind.”

For one hour a week Akihito is a member of Mrs Vining’s regular English language class, which she says “is conducted along entirely democratic lines.” For an additional hour she tutors the Prince privately. They converse entirely in English, which she says necessarily is still quite elementary.” Study Lincoln Even so, Akihito is more advanced than his fellow-pupils as a result of this extra hour’s instruction —and the tutoring he gets from an Englishman and an English-speak-ing Japanese to broaden his “feel” for the language. Mrs Vining says all her students are particularly interested in picture books which she brought from America. At present they are learning the English captions under a children’s story of Lincoln. Akihito lives in a special house provided for him at the school, but spends most of his time in the dormitory where he and the other boys are fed. “I can see no special privileges given to him by the other students,” she says. “The Crown Prince joins the other boys in their games and I think he is quite skilful in tennis and table tennis.”