It's a boy!

Japanese Princess Kiko just had a baby boy on 6 Sep.
This boy is the most expected baby boy in Japan since the countru has a succession crisis in the Imperial Family.



As you can see, in the Imperial Family, there are only girls for the next generation. Even if we count other Royal relatives, there are 8 girls. It's been 4 decades that the family doesn't have a boy...
Current Japanese constitution defines that only male in pateral line can succeed the Emperor. So, for super conservative Imperial Household Agency (This is the agency that controls everything about the Imperial Family. The TIME magazine described as "Shadowy Agency".) and politicians eager to have a male heir and put huge pressure on two Princesses, Kiko and Masako who wed two Princes from common families.

Kiko is from an academic family and met Prince in University. They fell in love and got married and had 2 girls. She is considered as a good-old day type of wife and mother. She didn't have career, had baby just after marriage, became a housewife and is devoted to her Royal duties.




Masako was a very successful young diplomat, raised abroad, educated in both Harvard and Oxford, speaks 5 laguages. The Crown Prince fell into her and proposed, but she refused many times because she loved her career. But she finally accepted the propose for the country believing that there must be a new opportunity to contribute as a Royal diplomat. However, the Imperial Family Agency wants her just to produce a male heir and forbid her to visit abroad...she miscarried once and got nervous breakdown, but finally had a baby girl. She was regarded as a new hope for super conservative Imperial Family, but she struggled and fell...
She is considered as a woman who couldn't bear the life in "luxurious prison" where she is not allowed to go out alone, where she just has to concentrate on producion a baby boy, where she is watched every single day... That's pretty understamdable if I think of her life before. That's really a shame for Japan to loose such person.



More than half of Japanese citizens would accept female Emperor in the Future, according to surveys, but considering the history of the oldest Royal Family in the world which kept the same blood line for more than 2000 years (!!!), it must not be an easy thing to change the tradition. But Japan has to face all this conservativeness someday soon.