Pregnancy of princess fuels succession hopes in Japan

Should her child, which media reports say is due in September or October, be a boy, it would be the first boy born to the imperial family since her husband was born in 1965. The mother of two daughters—Mako, 14, and Kako, 11 —Kiko has been mainly seen smiling with her family or carrying out public duties with her husband.

In contrast, Crown Princess Masako—a former diplomat —was out of the public eye for nearly two years with a stress-related illness and has one daughter, 4-year-old Aiko.

Masako’s plight sparked a sibling squabble rare in Japan’s imperial family after Akishino chided his older brother, Crown Prince Naruhito, 45, for publicly complaining about his wife’s troubles without consulting the Emperor first.

Naruhito shocked the public and the court when he told a news conference in May 2004 that Masako had “completely exhausted herself” trying to adapt to imperial life and alluded to obstacles to her achieving her dream of becoming a “royal envoy”.

Akishino, said to have been a bit unconventional in his youth, later stressed royal commitment to duty in contrast to Masako’s search for self-fulfilment.

Japanese tabloids have said that Kiko visits the imperial palace relatively often and has a warm relationship with her mother-in-law, Empress Michiko. She became only the second commoner after Michiko to marry into the imperial family when she wed Akishino in June 1990.

Akishino, who broke precedent by marrying before his elder brother, met Kiko when they were students at Tokyo’s Gakushuin University.

The two dated for some time, but word of the romance leaked out only shortly before their engagement was announced. Media reports at the time said he threatened to leave the imperial family if consent was not given for the match. In contrast to the

Empress, who came from a wealthy family, Kiko was the daughter of an economics professor and lived with her parents in a simple

apartment. —Reuters