Good (news) Friday? To Japan a (male) heir is born…

With all of the fanfare in the west this week over the long-awaited sightings of Tom Cruise’s baby girl, chances are that many of you missed the good news of the historic birth on Wednesday of Japanese Princess Kiko’s baby boy. Any Japanese patriot will tell you, however, that our obsession with celebrity babies pales in comparison to the reverence and unqualified joy with which all Japanese greeted the birth of this putative heir to the world’s oldest and, easily, most distinguished monarchy. And, he (or she) would be absolutely right!

But, all is not well in the state of Japan. And here’s why:

Japan already had an heir. She was born 5 years ago to Crown Princess Masako. But instead of greeting her birth with reverence and unqualified joy, most Japanese expressed sorrow and regret…because she was not a boy.

Princess (might-as-well-be-barren) Masako…

In this previous article, I expressed sympathy for Princess Masako who had been effectively exiled to her maiden-family’s country home after failing to inject life into the moribund Japanese imperial family. After all, the Japanese expected her to do for Japan’s monarchy what Princess Diana had done for Britain’s; i.e., exhibit a more contemporary style and provide a male heir…and a spare.

Indeed, by contrast, unforgiving Japanese monarchists were indignant at Masako for failing so spectacularly in both respects. And they were not shy about expressing their indignation, propagating a battery of promiscuous reasons for her male-bearing infertility.

Of course, to Westerners, Masako (here with daughter Princess Aiko) always seemed every bit as glamorous as Diana and confirmed that she was fertile after giving birth to a healthy baby girl (albeit 8 painfully-suspenseful years into her marriage to the future emperor of Japan). But to the Japanese, her failure to produce more children made her seem barren. And, her baby girl became more an object of resentment than a symbol of national pride.

Ironically, such national pressure to produce a boy would probably induce prohibitive performance anxiety in any woman. In fact, in Masako’s case, it not only inhibited her physically but also led to a nervous breakdown on the eve of her 10th wedding anniversary in 2003, which is what precipitated her exile.

Even more ironic, however, is the fact that after demands to produce a male heir almost drove her insane, the Japanese government introduced a royal inheritance bill that would allow Masako’s daughter and other females to, once again, ascend the 2,000-year-old Chrysanthemum Throne. Alas, as soon as the Imperial Household Agency proclaimed that Masako’s sister-in-law Kiko had given birth to a more suitable heir, no one in Japan retained any hope that this equal rights amendment to the Japanese constitution would be enacted during our lifetime.

But there’s irony even in this latest development. After all, some of history’s most successful and revered monarchs were women. And, notwithstanding my enlightened view that all monarchies are inherently untenable and absurdly anachronistic, the most famous and respected monarch in the world today is undoubtedly Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.

Princess (properly-fertile) Kiko…

Ultimately though, I am concerned about the psychological message this jubilation over Kiko’s boy and concomitant rejection of Masako’s girl conveys to all Japanese children. The Chinese at least could explain that they were (are) forced to place less value on girls, not for any intrinsic or customary reason, but out of necessity (to control their population explosion and promote manpower for economic production). And, as fatuous and misogynistic as this Chinese reasoning might be, it is more comprehensible than the reason the Japanese value royal princes over princesses (“tradition”), which is unqualifiedly facile and inhumane….

NOTE: Even though the Imperial Household Agency – comprised of zealous functionaries who control every aspect of the lives of the Japanese royal family – will make Japanese loyalists wait one week before announcing the baby boy ‘s name, it probably won’t make them wait to see pictures of him as long as Tom made celebrity gawkers wait to see pictures of Suri…here.

ENDNOTE: At the recent AIDS conference in Toronto, Canada, everyone from WHO and UN scientists to Bill Clinton and Bill Gates heralded studies which found that male circumcisions substantially reduce the incidence of HIV infections. Yet when I wrote about the positive impact this old Jewish custom could have on the spread of HIV, I was taken to task by a number of self-appointed defenders of the prepuce.

Click here to read my surrebuttal to them….

Princess Masako, Princess Aiko, Princess Kiko