Why an American Quaker Tutor for the Crown Prince? an Imperial Household's Strategy to Save Emperor Hirohito in Macarthur's
WHY AN AMERICAN QUAKER TUTOR FOR THE CROWN PRINCE? AN IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD’S STRATEGY TO SAVE EMPEROR HIROHITO IN MACARTHUR’S JAPAN by Kaoru Hoshino B.A. in East Asian Studies, Wittenberg University, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Pittsburgh 2010 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This thesis was presented by Kaoru Hoshino It was defended on April 2, 2010 and approved by Richard J. Smethurst, PhD, UCIS Research Professor, Department of History Akiko Hashimoto, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology Clark Van Doren Chilson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies Thesis Director: Richard J. Smethurst, PhD, UCIS Research Professor, Department of History ii Copyright © by Kaoru Hoshino 2010 iii WHY AN AMERICAN QUAKER TUTOR FOR THE CROWN PRINCE? AN IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD’S STRATEGY TO SAVE EMPEROR HIROHITO IN MACARTHUR’S JAPAN Kaoru Hoshino, M.A. University of Pittsburgh, 2010 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.
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