Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Princess gives birth to a boy, ends Japan's succession crisisPosted: 06 September 2006 0840 hrs
TOKYO - Japan's Princess Kiko on Wednesday gave birth to the royal family's first boy in more than 40 years, ending for now a succession crisis and silencing calls to let a woman sit on the throne.
The princess, just one week shy of her 40th birthday, gave birth to the third in line to the Chrysanthemum Throne at 8:27 am (2327 GMT), the palace said. "This morning Princess Kiko had an imperial prince," an Imperial Household Agency spokesman told AFP.
The boy weighed a light 2.6 kilogrammes (five pounds, 10 ounces), media reports said. In the first of a series of imperial rituals, Emperor Akihito was to give his fourth grandchild a ceremonial sword. He will be named later.
All television networks cut in to special programmes on the royal birth, airing past footage of the ever-smiling princess, a housewife who grew up in a middle-class apartment and already has two daughters.
The boy is the first to be born to the royal family since his own father Prince Akishino, the emperor's second son, in 1965. The boy could ease pressure on Crown Princess Masako, a former career woman who has suffered stress and mental illness trying to adapt to the tradition-bound palace. Masako and Crown Prince Naruhito have one child, four-year-old Princess Aiko, in 13 years of marriage.
The surprise news that Kiko was pregnant more than a decade after her last child in 1994 delighted conservatives, who believe the monarchy has passed along a paternal line for more than 2,600 years.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a reformist who steps down later this month, had supported introducing female succession, putting Aiko in line to the throne, an idea previously backed by a majority of the public.
But under pressure from the conservative wing of his Liberal Democratic Party, Koizumi dropped his proposed reform of Imperial House Law after news of Kiko's pregnancy.
The front-runner to replace Koizumi, conservative Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, has criticized female succession.
"Discussions on the imperial succession issue will subdue for a while and encourage conservatives to push for the continuation of a paternal line," said Kouichi Yokota, a professor of law at Ryutsu Keizai University.
"But that does not mean the debate is over," said Yokota, a royal expert. "There is no guarantee of the continued existence of the imperial family unless flexible succession rules are introduced."
There were eight female emperors in Japanese history, but all were direct descendants of male emperors and succession returned to the paternal line after each female emperor abdicated.
Koizumi's proposal, which was written by a panel of experts and prominent public figures, would have put Princess Aiko in line to the throne and let her first child follow her regardless of sex.
The royal family is widely revered in Japan and the birth was expected to give a boost to the economy.
Toshihiro Nagahama, a senior economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, estimated the royal birth could bring about 150 billion yen (1.3 billion dollars) to the economy as more people decide to get married or have children.
Koizumi has voiced hope that Kiko's pregnancy would encourage Japanese to have children. The population shrank last year for the first time since World War II, a problem blamed in part on the cultural difficulties for Japanese women to juggle careers and families. - AFP/ir
