Elizabeth Gray Vining

I never tried to indoctrinate him with any specific dogma. I tried only to expose him to the best that I knew. Religion, I have always felt, must be caught before it can be taught, and democracy is learned at least as much through living and doing as through an intellectual understanding of its theory.

I reached the Prince and said, "In this class your namie is Jimmy". There was no particular reason for Jimmy, except that it just jappened to be one of my favorite names.
He replied promptly, "No I am Prince".
"Yes", I agreed cordially. "You are Prince Akihito. That is your real name. But in this class you have an English name. In this class your name is Jimmy." I waited, a little breathless.
He smiled cheerfully, and the whole class beamed.

When I read this speech I wondered, as I was so often to wonder, whether, had the situation been reversed and a Japanese woman had come to teach in an American boy's school, she would have received an introduction so designed to build up the respect and cooperation of the students.

It has often been assumed that the American tutor was imposed by the Occupation. Nothing could be further from the fact. The idea proceed form the Emperor himself ; he made the proposal on his own initiative without even consulting the people in charge of the Crown Prince's education, and it was an unprecedented step for him to take.
For a long time after my arrival in Japan I did not realize just how extraordinary it was for the Emperor, who traditionally accept tje decisions of the experts about his son without question and even without comment, to take on himself a decision of this kind.

It is difficult for the American to realize to what extent decisions involving his personnal life were made not by the Emperor himself but by relatively obscure officials for him.