For a generation, Japan's royal family has been gripped by a succession crisis. By law, the throne can pass only to males. But Emperor Akihito's sons?Crown Prince Naruhito, 46, and Prince Akishino, 40?have so far produced three girls between them. With the chance of a royal baby boy looking increasingly remote, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi backed an initiative that sought to change the succession rules to allow a female heiress. The plan was shelved when Kiko's surprise pregnancy was announced in February, once more reviving hopes for a male heir. Yet few details of the pregnancy?let alone the all-important gender of the baby?are likely to emerge before the appointed hour. As Kiko rests in Aiiku Hospital, which was built with funds partially donated by Emperor Hirohito to commemorate the birth of his own son Akihito, she remains deep in the impenetrable cocoon of secrecy and security that is the hallmark of the Imperial Household Agency (IHA), the mysterious government body that manages every detail of the royal family's affairs.
The IHA's careful control over such matters lends an air of orderly dignity to this historic drama. Scratch the surface, however, and there's far more confusion and uncertainty than meets the eye. There is, of course, the possibility that Kiko will have a girl, instantly reigniting the controversy over whether a woman should be allowed to become Empress. There is the strange, anachronistic role in public life of the IHA, once an almighty organization that's now scrambling to retain power and relevance. There are the efforts of conservatives to use the royal family to further their own nationalistic agenda. And there is the larger, hopelessly unresolved question of what, if any, role this ancient monarchy should play in modern-day Japan.
The Japanese imperial family is an extraordinary phenomenon, widely beloved, yet laden with taboos most Japanese refrain from discussing. Even without counting its mythical prehistory, it's much older than any other surviving hereditary monarchy. Unlike European royals or China's ancient Emperors, Japanese Emperors were considered divine beings, direct descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu. But after the 12th century, they lost most of their temporal power. A long line of shoguns used the Emperors' cooperation to validate their own rule. Emperors lived in seclusion, often serving as little more than figureheads. Indeed, after eight centuries of military rule, according to The Yamato Dynasty by historians Peggy and Sterling Seagrave, many Japanese in the early 19th century didn't even know that an Emperor still existed.
The Meiji Restoration changed all that. In 1867, a group of samurai toppled the last shogunate. Fearful of Western power encroaching on Japan, they placed the 15-year-old Emperor Meiji at the center of the body politic and made him the focal point of their efforts to stimulate a new national consciousness. For the first time, all of Japan was compelled to swear allegiance to an Emperor, and it effectively became a theocracy. Shinto, Japan's native animist religion?which had never developed a formal dogma or orthodoxy?was reconfigured to center on the Emperor. Imperial ties to Buddhism were severed. Codified by a constitution and a flurry of new laws, all earthly and religious power emanated from the Emperor, a god incarnate. Historians bolstered the new imperial legitimacy by using ancient texts to draw a direct line of 120 Emperors between Meiji and Jimmu, the mythological first Emperor said to have begun his reign on Feb. 11, 660 B.C. A number of traditions that many Japanese think of as ancient?including the Japanese flag and the imperial chrysanthemum seal?in truth date from the late 19th century. "I don't think most people realize that the whole current conception of the imperial system is only 135 years old, and a product of politics," says Kyosuke Itagaki, author of a recent book critical of the imperial system.