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The land of the rising son

"May you be the mother of a hundred sons," goes the customary blessing for a just-married woman in India. "May you be the mother of just one," all of Japan seemed to be begging of Princess Kiko. Ending months of fevered speculation about its gender, the 40-year-old Japanese homemaker did exactly as the nation ordered. At 2.6 kg, the little fellow may be a lightweight but is no ordinary boy. He is the first male child to be born in Japan's royal family since his father Prince Akishino in 1965. His arrival has solved a succession `crisis' and put an end to the intense debate about whether the Imperial Household Law of 1947 should be amended to allow female heirs to succeed to the Chrysanthemum Throne. There is, of course, a growing realisation that in an age where families are growing smaller and smaller, the long-term continuance of Japan's imperial tradition will hinge on accepting equal primogeniture. After all, can anyone be certain that one day the little Prince will have a male heir of his own? In the life of the world's oldest monarchy, the regulation that only men may become emperors is fairly recent. In its recorded history, Japan has seen six empresses, the last in 1771. It was only in 1889, following the Meiji Restoration, that women were barred from the throne — a prohibition that found expression in the 1947 law enacted under Japan's post-World War Constitution.

Japan's passionate debate about the royal succession reflects, at one level, the importance it gives to tradition and constitutional monarchy. At another level, it is a reminder of how far the world has come from royal succession machinations marked by intrigue, betrayal, and even murder. This issue has profoundly influenced the course of history elsewhere. The most powerful illustration of this was the outcome of Henry VIII's obsession with producing a male heir. When his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, failed to provide one, the portly King — who had already turned his roving eye on the beautiful Anne Boleyn — sought the annulment of his marriage. When the Pope demurred, Henry divorced Catherine by an Act of Parliament, married Anne, broke from the Roman Catholic Church, established himself as "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England," and forever changed the face of Western christendom. It is another matter that a couple of miscarriages later, Henry — who had by then taken up with Anne's lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour — had his second wife unjustly executed for adultery, incest, and high treason. Japan's succession controversy was tepid stuff by the standards of the past — the fodder for newspaper columns and animated discussions over sake and sushi, and perhaps the excuse to celebrate the birth of a boy in the land of the rising son.

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