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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-03262010-150454 |
| Date | 01 June 2010 |
| Creators | Hoshino, Kaoru |
| Contributors | Dr. Akiko Hashimoto, Dr. Richard J. Smethurst, Dr. Clark Van Doren Chilson |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-03262010-150454/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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