Japan's weary public, battered by months of political scandals and gloomy economic forecasts, was finally given something it could cheer about yesterday. The Imperial Household Agency confirmed that Crown Princess Masako was pregnant.
With no male births since 1965, and following almost eight years of childless marriage between the princess and Crown Prince Naruhito, all eyes have been on the imperial bedroom. Japan's normally pliant media had openly speculated that Princess Masako's time (at 37 years of age) was running out.
Nationalists boast that Japan has the world's oldest unbroken dynasty, dating back to 660BC, although most historians scoff at this date. The patrilineal system means that failure to produce a male heir would mean the end of the imperial line and the demise of the revered institution.
The prospect worries Mr Junichiro Koizumi's new government enough to have raised the possibility of revising the system of succession. Mr Koizumi, who told reporters yesterday evening that the imperial pregnancy was "unusually bright and welcome news", has publicly supported the idea of a woman on the Chrysanthemum Throne.
The stress of supporting two thousand years of Japanese tradition on the frail shoulders of the princess began to show in recent years, and many blamed it for her miscarriage in December 1999.
Her father pleaded with reporters to "take it easy" this time. The media pack, awash with stories about corporate restructuring, government debt and teenage crime, has so far ignored him and leapt on the story like hungry dogs on a bone. Normal programming on all channels was interrupted to announce the story yesterday evening.
Evening bulletins carried early footage of plain old Ms Masako Owada, as she was then known, as an overseas student at Oxford. The smiling student was replaced by the increasingly troubled looking Princess Masako, who broke feminist hearts when she abandoned her successful career as a diplomat for the dubious charms of life in the tradition-bound Imperial household.
