The succession of Japan'simperial throne

Princess Kiko, the wife of the emperor's younger son, gave birth
to a boy on Wednesday morning, securing the succession of Japan's
imperial throne for another generation.

In an event that had been anticipated for months, the princess gave
birth by Caesarean section to a boy weighing 2.5 kilograms - or 5
pounds, 10 ounces - and measuring 49 centimeters, or 19.2 inches, at
8:27 a.m., the Imperial Household Agency reported. Newspapers here
scrambled to print extra editions to mark the birth of the
still-unnamed child, the first male born in the royal family in 41
years.

The birth of a male heir will shelve for the foreseeable future a
politically explosive debate over whether women should be allowed to
ascend to the throne. It has solved for now a succession crisis that
had taken its most direct human toll on Crown Princess Masako, 42, the
Harvard-educated former diplomat whose inability to bear a boy
contributed to her depression and withdrawal from the public.

Under the current succession system, only men in a direct line to the
emperor can inherit the throne. So Kiko's child will become third in
line to the throne, after Crown Prince Naruhito, 46, and the child's
own father, Prince Akishino.

The crown prince and crown princess have a daughter, Aiko, 4; Prince
Akishino, 40, and Kiko, 39, have two daughters, Mako, 14, and Kako,
11. But none are eligible to ascend the throne.

Last year, with seemingly no resolution to the succession crisis,
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi convened a panel of experts that
recommended that a woman and her offspring be allowed to ascend to the
throne. The change would have allowed Aiko, as well as her first-born,
regardless of sex, to inherit the throne.

Before the bill could be introduced in Parliament, however, news of
Kiko's pregnancy in February led Koizumi to put the proposal on the
back burner.

Shinzo Abe, the nationalist chief cabinet secretary who is almost
certain to succeed Koizumi later this month as prime minister and is
known to have opposed the proposed bill.

It stirred unexpectedly fierce opposition from Japan's conservatives,
who argued that the male-only succession is the Chrysanthemum Throne's
defining characteristic. Japan has had eight empresses in the past,
but they did not have offspring who succeeded them.

Instead, the throne always reverted to a male relative who was related
on his father's side to a previous emperor. That, conservatives
argued, had always guaranteed the purity of the male bloodline - or,
in more modern terms, the male Y chromosome.

According to this logic, conservatives did not oppose changing the law
to allow Aiko to ascend to the throne but refused to countenance a
revision that would allow her offspring to do so. (The Japanese public
overwhelmingly supported Aiko's ascension, according to polls, but
grew more ambivalent about a matrilineal line.)

Japanese emperors have not had political authority since Emperor
Hirohito renounced his divinity after World War II.

Among possible solutions to the succession crisis, conservatives
proposed that other branches of the imperial family, abolished during
the post-World War II American occupation, be resurrected to find a
relative of the emperor with the right Y chromosome. Prince Tomohito
of Mikasa, 60, a cousin of the current emperor, argued for the revival
of the concubine system, which in the past had made plenty of
child-bearing women available to the emperor.

The birth may also end the psychological drama surrounding the royal
family, especially Masako. When she gave up a career in diplomacy to
marry the crown prince in 1993, she was heralded as a modern Japanese
woman who could perhaps even modernize the imperial institution. But
the princess was soon confronted with the reality that she was now
expected to do only one thing: bear a male heir.

When the couple finally had a child, it was a girl, Aiko. The Imperial
Household Agency, the powerful bureaucracy that oversees the royal
family, kept up the pressure to have another child, and Masako
eventually slipped into a depression.

Her plight led the crown prince to hold an extraordinary news
conference two years ago, in which he stated that he would not let his
wife be sacrificed for the greater good of the monarchy. "There has
been a move," the prince said, "to deny Masako's career and
personality."

Akishino, who had always lived in his older brother's shadow,
criticized his brother and sister-in-law by saying that they must put
their public duties above all. Around the same time, the Imperial
Household Agency publicly exhorted Akishino and Kiko - who had last
had a child a dozen years ago - to try for another baby.

Kiko, the daughter of a university professor who never had a career
before getting married, has become the darling of the Japanese media.

By contrast, Masako has increasingly become a target, routinely
criticized by the conservative media for her supposed selfishness and
lack of common sense.

Ordinary Japanese welcomed the rare piece of good news about the royal
family, though they were split as to whether the birth should affect
the debate over female succession.

"I'm glad it's a boy," said Ryoji Inoue, 33, a salaryman interviewed
at a subway station here. "I want the male succession to be
maintained. That's because Japanese society is still led by men. I
hope a couple of more boys will be born. The imperial law can be
changed when we don't have any choice in the future."

But Nanase Fujiwara, a 23-year-old housewife pushing her 6-month-old
daughter in a stroller, supported the idea of matrilineal succession.
"There's no problem with a female throne," she said. "But I think
people around the imperial family tend to have old ideas and are stuck
on male succession."