Pregnancy news delights Japan

TOKYO – What’s the only thing better than a princess? For some in Japan, the answer became as clear as a glass slipper Tuesday – a possible prince.

After decades of girls, girls, girls, the Imperial Household Agency shocked the nation Tuesday with the possibility of a long-awaited male heir. Even as the Japanese government was putting the final touches on a historic bill that would allow females to ascend the 2,000-year old Chrysanthemum Throne, the agency confirmed rumors that 39-year old Princess Kiko, wife of Emperor Akihito’s second son, Prince Akishino, is in the early stages of pregnancy.

The mere chance of a male heir is a fairy tale come true for conservatives here who are bitterly opposed to female succession, and the announcement threw a curveball into what seemed the likely passage of a bill that would have permitted it in the world’s oldest male-dominated monarchy still in existence. If the baby is a boy, he would be the first male born into Japan’s royal family since Akishino himself in 1965. The birth of a boy, many here say, could quash the growing movement to let 4-year old Princess Aiko, the only child of Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife, Princess Masako, ascend the throne after her father as a reigning empress.

It immediately set up a potential royal battle of the sexes in Japan, pitting a powerful crop of old-boy politicians with renewed hopes for a male heir against more modern thinkers, chiefly Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who believe it is high time to update imperial law and pave the way for Aiko’s reign.

The news of Kiko’s pregnancy spread a wave of joy through Japan, with newspapers printing extras and normally staid TV commentators barely able to contain their emotions.

Yet the debate over succession, like the emperor himself, is largely symbolic. Japanese emperors – including the late World War II era ruler Hirohito – were once considered divine. But after the emperor’s divinity was renounced amid Japan’s defeat in World War II, the position became a secular post with extremely limited powers – though it retained its place as the leading symbol of the Japanese nation.