Japan has waited more than six years for such a joyous arrival of its 127th monarch. When Crown Prince Naruhito married Masako Owada, a commoner with a blue-blood education, in mid-1993, most Japanese cheered her addition to the imperial family. Before long, however, the applause gave way to clamoring for a male heir to Japan’s imperial family, a clan that has held the throne of this island nation for more than 2,500 years. Gossipy headlines seemed to mask an unspoken hope: perhaps an imperial baby could provide a distraction from a painful economic recession–and a comfort as the country faced confusing social change. If the princess indeed is pregnant–as NEWSWEEK went to press, the stories remained unconfirmed–the press frenzy will continue. The papers are already full of speculation about how an imperial pregnancy might affect the nation. “If there is one most effective economic-stimulus measure without spending money, it is the pregnancy of Princess Masako,” one tabloid quoted an official as saying. “If she is pregnant, the mood of Japan will become very bright.”
But could an imperial pregnancy really cheer the Japanese up? To many Japanese, the imperial family seems hopelessly out of touch with the real world. A smart junior diplomat, Masako was expected to update the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy by being more public and more candid. Instead she disappeared “as if behind a high cloud in heaven,” says a close friend of the imperial couple’s. Cloistered inside the ramparts of Tokyo’s vast Imperial Palace, she shunned interviews, dodged the limelight and took to walking three steps behind her husband–all at the behest of the ultra-orthodox Imperial Household Agency, or Kunai-cho, the courtiers who control the imperial family’s schedules and guard protocol and tradition. Gradually, Masako’s inability to conceive became an obsession for the boisterous Tokyo tabloids. “The media has put her under tremendous pressure,” says Yasunori Okadome, editor of the magazine Uwasa no Shinso (Truth of the Rumors). “Though they use the most polite wording, they treat her like a tool for producing babies.”
The byzantine ways of the imperial household were on full display as the first stories about Masako’s possible pregnancy leaked out. News accounts based on unnamed palace sources report that she missed several scheduled engagements last week due to morning sickness and also underwent urine tests that showed conception. “We have not reached the point where we can determine pregnancy,” cautioned a top official at the Imperial Household Agency. “An appropriate examination would be conducted at an appropriate time.” According to some palace watchers, the medical exam could come early this week, in the form of a sonogram administered at a clinic inside the palace. Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi added a cryptic comment too. “If the crown princess is pregnant, it is a very auspicious thing,” he told reporters, adding that he would “wait quietly” for definitive news.
That’s how most Japanese felt. Despite the media hype, the imperial family no longer inspires the kind of passionate interest that the Thai and British royal families still do. Sixty years ago Japan still saw the emperor as a living god, and its armies blitzed across Asia in Hirohito’s name. After World War II the imperial family kept symbolic power but failed to make itself relevant, particularly to the young. “I have never thought of the imperial family,” says a 19-year-old with bleached blond hair as he hands out fliers on the street. “I didn’t even know about the news that [the princess] is pregnant.” In the face of such public apathy, critics hope the arrival of an imperial baby might inspire the Imperial Household Agency to modernize the monarchy.
The agency protects the imperial family so zealously that average Japanese have no idea what they do or think. Outsiders have almost no access to life in the palace; even a recent query into what pets the imperial family keeps was met with a stiff reminder that the palace doesn’t divulge such private matters. “The agency should think about the future of the imperial family,” says author Toshiaki Kawahara, who has written more than 20 books on the family. “I am afraid there will be an increasing lack of interest.”
Japan’s modern dynasty goes back to 1868, when rebels toppled the Tokugawa shogun and put the emperor back on the throne after a 600-year hiatus. This revolution, known as the Meiji Restoration, made the emperor a Shinto god-king and set Tokyo on a course of rapid modernization. Within a few decades Japan was the strongest industrial power in Asia, and the most aggressive. The Meiji emperor’s grandson, Hirohito, became the symbol of Japanese imperialism during the war. But in 1945, after American bombers obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, Hirohito made his first radio address to his subjects, ordering them to “endure the unendurable” and surrender to Allied forces. Many Japanese cried, because they had failed the emperor.
Contrary to popular fears, Japan’s conquerors preserved the imperial system and refrained from trying Hirohito for war crimes. Under reforms implemented by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the top Allied commander in the Pacific, Japan was given a democratic Constitution but allowed to retain the emperor as a symbol of the nation. Hirohito largely retreated from view, emerging for official functions and reigned in obscurity until his death in 1989. His son, Emperor Akihito, broke with tradition by marrying a commoner but otherwise followed in his father’s footsteps. His eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, is an Oxford-trained historian who enjoys hiking and writes scholarly papers on medieval Japan. He, too, challenged tradition only with his choice of brides. The daughter of a career diplomat without aristocratic pedigree, Masako is not the demure product of finishing schools and leisure.
She speaks five languages, graduated from Harvard magna cum laude and once looked forward to a promising diplomatic career. When the crown prince came courting in his late 20s, he was under tremendous court pressure to find a princess. Masako soon felt the heat, too. After agonizing for six years, she finally agreed to marry. Initially, there was a sense that rather than surrendering to the imperial system, she was joining the imperial family to change it. Commentators dubbed her a “Japanese Hillary,” and many citizens hoped for a local equivalent of Britain’s Princess Diana. What they got was a princess who challenged few rules and adapted quickly to the old order.
The princess remains popular with certain segments of Japanese society–especially housewives. But they identify with Masako as a woman and a hopeful mother, not as the bearer of their future crown sovereign. Miyoko Suzuki, 59, has a daughter in her 30s who is married but does not have any children. “I don’t know if they don’t want to, or want to but can’t,” she says. “My daughter doesn’t like me asking, as she is very sensitive about this. I imagine Masako has been sensitive too.” While a small minority of Japanese women envy Masako’s fantasy existence, most sympathize with her sacrifices. First she succumbed to great pressure and gave up a promising career to marry into the imperial family. Then she endured years of badgering over her inability to bear a prince. If she is indeed pregnant, the pressure won’t abate until she gives birth to a male child. “She has been closely watched, and everyone is waiting for her to have a child,” says Yumi Katori, a 35-year-old interpreter and mother of two in Osaka. “I feel sorry for her.”
That’s more than most men are willing to admit. “I guess I’d celebrate if it’s true, though I don’t have strong feelings,” a 47-year-old software salesman told NEWSWEEK. “It has no impact on my life.” At the cheap eateries tucked under the railway bridges near the Ginza, Tokyo’s famed shopping strip, Masako’s health was rarely a topic of conversation last Friday. Customers, most of them salarymen, bemoaned Japan’s sluggish economy or gossiped about colleagues from the office. A banker drinking with colleagues brushed off a question about Masako, saying: “We have more serious matters to discuss.”
Few Japanese have anything bad to say about their imperial rulers. The trouble is, they feel less affinity as time passes. A stockbroker, interviewed by NEWSWEEK as he watched share prices tick modestly higher in Tokyo on Friday, summed up the lack of interest. “People don’t have any special attachment to the imperial family,” he said, “but they don’t have any hostility, either. To us, they live a totally irrelevant existence.”
In minor ways, the Imperial Household Agency is trying to refresh its image. In November, during celebrations to mark the 10th anniversary of Emperor Akihito’s reign, the agency allowed a free pop concert to be held in front of the palace. The top act: Yoshiki, the former keyboard player for legendary heavy-metal act X Japan. Attendance topped 20,000, and even the emperor and empress made a brief appearance before retreating back across the moat. “The kids went, but they were only interested in the concert,” says editor Okadome.
In the trendy Shibuya district of Tokyo, Japan’s outlandish kids say royalty is simply uncool. Mikiko Takahashi is 19 and works at a clothing store. Standing on the street atop towering platform shoes, she struggles to locate Masako in her pop-addled memory. “I vaguely remember that she used to have a dog, right?” The question is serious. Then she asks the meaning of the word koshitsu–imperial family. “Sorry,” she blurts upon being told, “but I have no interest.” Rieko Nakamura, 18, found reports of Masako’s pregnancy confusing. “I was watching the TV news, and I said, ‘Wait a minute, hasn’t she had a baby or two?’ See, I don’t have any interest in the imperial family. I don’t even remember the name of the crown prince.”
If the pregnancy is confirmed, the press and the rarefied world of palace watchers will focus their speculation on what happens if Masako has a girl. That outcome might actually intensify pressure to revise a 1947 law banning women from ascending the Chrysanthemum Throne. Today the line of succession links only males, an inconvenience given that the last prince to grace the imperial nursery–Naruhito’s younger brother, Akishino–was born in 1965. Akishino is now married with two daughters. Should he and the crown prince fail to produce a male heir, it would be up to the Japanese Parliament to either change the rules or risk breaking an imperial lineage that goes back 126 generations. Japanese history records eight god-queens; the most recent reigned in the 18th century. “If it’s a boy, every- body will be happy and we’ll celebrate the birth of a new heir to the throne,” says Hiromi Ikeuchi, a 38-year-old marriage counselor. “If it’s a girl, we’ll have to rewrite the Imperial Household Act so that she can be the emperor. Whatever happens, Princess Masako will be the key person.”
Revisions have been discussed “secretly” at the highest level for several years, a source near the imperial family told NEWSWEEK. “In my personal view,” the former diplomat said, “the change is quite reasonable, given that the Constitution itself says both sexes are equal. The current system is not very sensible in the modern way of things.”
Even traditionalists concede that the imperials need an image boost. Many think a pregnant princess would be just what the country needs to revive affection for the family. “Young people have little interest in the imperial family because it is far from their everyday lives,” says Tatsuo Seike, chairman of the TV Commercial Research Center in Tokyo. “But with news of the baby–if it’s true–will come a huge amount of press reports that will improve how they feel.” That is, if they remember who the imperial family is. But babies are always something to celebrate.
