Why an American Quaker Tutor for the Crown Prince? an Imperial Household's Strategy to Save Emperor Hirohito in Macarthur's Japan
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: This thesis examines the motives behind the Japanese imperial household's decision to invite an American Christian woman, Elizabeth Gray Vining, to the court as tutor to Crown Prince Akihito about one year after the Allied Occupation of Japan began. In the past, the common narrative of scholars and the media has been that the new tutor, Vining, came to the imperial household at the invitation of Emperor Hirohito, who personally asked George Stoddard, head of the United States Education Mission to Japan, to find a tutor for the crown prince. While it may have been true that the emperor directly spoke to Stoddard regarding the need of a new tutor for the prince, the claim that the emperor came up with such a proposal entirely on his own is debatable given his lack of decision-making power, as well as the circumstances surrounding him and the imperial institution at the time of the Occupation. From September 1945 to the end of his term in April 1951, General Douglas MacArthur led the operation of the Occupation. As Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, MacArthur had a considerable effect on the affairs and decision-making processes of the imperial household, whose major concern was the emperor's life and sovereignty that had been at stake since Japan's surrender. To protect the emperor in MacArthur's Japan, the imperial advisers made a series of stratagems to project a new image of the emperor favorable to MacArthur who had a personal aim to Christianize Japan. Given these circumstances, this thesis argues that it is not coincidental that the emperor, or whoever was in charge of finding a tutor for the crown prince, requested that the new tutor be American Christian; the purpose of the new tutor was to provide the crown prince English-language lessons, which, from an objective point of view, could have been conducted by a non-American or non-Christian native English speaker. Ultimately, this thesis shows that the imperial household's effort to invite a new tutor for the crown prince was more politically-oriented than has been interpreted in the past.
Author: Kaoru Hoshino
Language: English
Topic: Japanese History and Culture
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W176376050