Contract Renewed

For the chubby young Prince of the August Succession and Enlightened Benevolence, it had been a most enlightening year. Last week, pleased with his son's progress, the Emperor of Japan rehired Crown Prince Akihito's U.S. tutor for another year, at a raise in salary. Mrs. Elizabeth Gray Vining, a Quaker lady from Philadelphia, had well earned her $2,000 and keep.

Since January, the Empress herself had been studying English with Mrs. Vining, and Akihito's three sisters and younger brother were all getting lessons, too. Besides this solid schedule of tutoring, Mrs. Vining had her regular classes at the democratized Peers and Peeresses schools, somehow managed to splice in talks to Japanese teachers about how to teach the democratic way.

In her spare time, hard-working Mrs. Vining has been studying Japanese. She had been hired merely to teach Akihito English (he has Japanese instructors in everything else), but she found it hard to get the prince to pay attention. So many learned professors and eminent lawyers had lectured Akihito on so many weighty matters that his learning edge was dulled.

Mrs. Vining tried a novel approach. She explained: "One of the first things I did was to teach him to play tennis in English." That made the language seem of some use. Then she got him interested in games involving a map of the world and miniature ships. "The ships follow routes: they stop at a port and unload a cargo of rice and take on a cargo of coffee. They run into fog and have to turn back. There is a lot of vocabulary practice in the natural talk of playing the game. ... I teach everything in English. Then, when [Prince Akihito] learns something, he thinks in English without translation." When Mrs. Vining returns to Japan--she flew home last week for a vacation--she and Akihito will start reading Robert Lawson's book of American biographies, They Were Strong and Good.

When Mrs. Vining talks about Akihito, a defensively maternal note creeps into her voice. Says she: "He's a perfectly normal boy, very free with the others and full of fun. He has a natural manner, except when photographed. Then he wears his picture-taking look, a rather bored expression. . . . He has a good mind . . . direct and honest. It would be easy for him to say he understands when he doesn't and he will not do that."

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