Elizabeth Vining

AFTER Japan was defeated, one of the problems facing the victors was what to do with its royal family. General Douglas MacArthur, who became virtual ruler of Japan, decided magnanimously not to put the emperor on trial for war crimes; in any case, he felt the most important royal was the emperor's elder son, Akihito. How was he to be brought up as future head of state of the new, democratised, American-style Japan? Enter Elizabeth Vining. In 1946, when Prince Akihito was 12, she became his tutor, teaching him English and something of American ways.

Mrs Vining said in a book of her experiences, “Windows for the Crown Prince”, that it was the emperor's own idea that an American teacher should be brought into the closed circle of the imperial court. Presumably she believed that. She believed most things she was told. But little happened in Japan during the American occupation without MacArthur's approval. His was the real government within the formal government. Indeed, Mrs Vining tells of interviews with the general, “a fine looking man with an old-fashioned courtesy”, when he questioned her closely about young Akihito's progress.

She seemed to be genuinely surprised that she had been chosen for the job. Among the Americans and British in Japan after the war there were dozens of linguists with teaching experience. In the emperor's court itself there were officials with a good knowledge of English and who had travelled widely. Mrs Vining had no Japanese and had never previously visited Japan. She came from an old American family of Scottish descent. She had worked for a time as a teacher, and had written a number of books for children. She was a Christian, but, as a Quaker, a moderate one. Now, in her late 40s, she was a widow and childless. The headhunters sent from Japan decided that she was the perfect American schoolmarm for Prince Akihito.

A prince called Jimmy

When Elizabeth Vining first met the prince, her reaction was, “Poor little boy.” Not for him the happy home life celebrated on cereal packets in America. The prince lived apart from his parents, visiting them once a week when they had dinner together. Mrs Vining saw him as a “small boy, round faced and solemn”, but “lovable looking”. The future emperor did not record what he thought when he first met Mrs Vining, but it is reasonable to speculate that, for different reasons, he did feel pretty solemn.

Here was this towering foreigner who knew not a word of his language and insisted on calling him Jimmy because she found his real name difficult to pronounce. However, the tall lady and the little boy seemed soon to have achieved a common purpose. Indeed, they had little choice: two quite different people thrown together by the extraordinary circumstances of the time, and having to make the best of it.

The prince proved to be easy to teach. He was bright, and had learnt a few English words before Mrs Vining arrived. By the time she left Japan four years later he was fluent in English and was picking up French and German as well. Mrs Vining acknowledged that there were times when she felt she was the student, acquiring bits of Japanese.

If she had a worry it was how the officials of the emperor's court regarded her. They were invariably polite, but what was going on behind their imperturbable features? They must, she thought, wonder just what she was doing “to their adored prince”. A lot of people today, in Japan and abroad, also wonder what influence Elizabeth Vining had, in his formative years, on the prince, who was to become emperor on his father's death in 1989. The answer may be that she had quite a lot. Mrs Vining promoted in the prince the unJapanese idea of individualism, of making up his own mind, rather than always turning to a court official for direction: “of daring to make mistakes”.

Even today in Japan, government policy tends to be made by officials, with politicians simply providing their public voice. The dictates of the royal household mean that Emperor Akihito keeps his counsel, but those who know him say that his liberal-minded views are probably ahead of those of most Japanese. He and his wife (a commoner whom he met playing tennis) brought up their three children as a close family. He has sought more from life than ceremony. He is an authority on ichthyology, the study of fishes, and has published 25 papers on the subject. Much of his worldly outlook was no doubt shaped by visits to some 40 countries, repeatedly having to handle nagging demands to atone for his father's sins. But Mrs Vining sowed the seeds of his independent thinking. After she left Japan Akihito wrote to her from time to time, and he visited her at her home in Philadelphia. She was a guest at his wedding, the only foreigner to be invited.

The Japanese government decided to present Mrs Vining with a medal, the Order of the Sacred Crown, an award given only to women and with eight degrees of merit. It was explained that the first and second degrees were reserved for princesses. Would Mrs Vining be content with the third? “Mottai nai,” (“It's too good”) she said in her best Japanese.