Posted on 10/24/2008 10:39:57 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Japan's Imperial Family faces a crisis of legitimacy because of growing discontent with the absence from public life of Crown Princess Masako, senior courtiers in the Imperial Palace fear.
Five years after she gave up public duties because of depression, sympathy for the Princess's plight is giving way to scepticism about the seriousness of her condition - and to anxiety about what her continuing indisposition will mean for the monarchy when her husband, Crown Prince Naruhito, succeeds to the Chrysanthemum Throne.
For the first time respectable commentators are openly discussing what was once unthinkable: the possibility of an imperial divorce.
The crisis will be brought into focus next week with the visit to Japan of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. “Royal families around the world can no longer take for granted their legitimacy,” a palace source said last week. “In the 125th generation [of the present Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko], legitimacy is earned through hard work and humility. But we worry about the 126th generation.”
When the Princess ceased her official duties abruptly in 2003, the Imperial Household Agency (IHA) first announced that she was suffering from shingles. When The Times reported that she was also being treated for depression, the IHA denounced the article as indecent - only to confirm two months later that she was suffering from an “adjustment disorder”.
The public reaction was one of sympathy for the Princess, who gave up a career as a diplomat to marry Prince Naruhito in 1993. She struggled to conceive a child and, after undergoing fertility treatment, suffered a miscarriage. The couple's only child, Princess Aiko, was born in 2001 but, as a girl, is ineligible to ascend to the throne. The birth of a boy to the Crown Prince's younger brother
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
How sad that their little girl is ineligible for the throne. Shades of Henry VIII.
Any self-respecting and loving husband would have long ago stood fully by her, renounced the throne for himself and given that direct line to his brother, and gone into commoner life with her, and get her—once and for all—out of that terrible, claustrophobic, dysfunctional Imperial Palace!
Amen! I can’t imagine why anyone would want that job in this day and age.
A japanese marriage is dysfunctional enough under the best circumstances.
you should have quite while you were ahead with just the first sentence
Things may have changed since we were stationed there in the long, long ago, but from what I read, not nearly enough.
Why are there so many “parasito” single gals who absolutely will not marry one of their own?
Some days I’m happy just being the pauper I am, instead of a prince. True freedom is what matters!
Now if I lived anywhere but America, I’d probably sing a different tune. ;-)
i knew before they married that it was not going to work... i could just tell... i saw them on some news show years ago...
and conversely, why are there so many japanese women who are married or are getting married? you tell me.
At least he’s not stealing a page from the muslims and taking a second wife.
Like a little bird, trapped in a cage. . . .
> At least he’s not stealing a page from the muslims and taking a second wife. <
How do you know?
The custom of taking a “minor wife” is very deeply entrenched in the culture of east Asia — and it wouldn’t be a bit surprising to me if the Crown Prince should be a follower of this old tradition.
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