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Japanese royal birth puts an end to succession row

A group of Japanese dancers perform to celebrate the birth of Japan's new prince in Tokyo yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

Japan's Princess Kiko yesterday gave birth to the royal family's first boy in more than 40 years, easing a succession crisis and silencing calls to let a woman lead the world's oldest monarchy.

Networks broke in with special broadcasts, commuters snapped up extra editions of newspapers and political leaders rushed to offer congratulations on the birth of the long-awaited third in line to the Chrysanthemum Throne.

The boy is the first male child to be born to the royal family since his father Prince Akishino, the emperor's second son, in 1965.

For months, Japan's press was full of fevered speculation on whether it would be a boy or girl, although the palace insisted it had been a secret until the delivery.

Princess Kiko, an ever-smiling housewife just one week shy of her 40th birthday, had a smooth Cesarean section to deliver the boy, who weighed a light 2.6kg.

"The new prince is very healthy and well. He has been crying," said doctor Masao Nakamura, who performed the Cesarean section operation at Aiiku Hospital.

"After the operation, I asked the princess, `How do you feel? Congratulations.' And the princess replied to me, `Thank you. I feel well,'" Nakamura told a press conference.

In the first of a series of rituals, Emperor Akihito sent his fourth grandchild a ceremonial 26cm sword to symbolically protect him. The baby will be named in a week's time and is expected to be out of the hospital within 10 days.

"It is a wonderful thing that a baby was born. Preserving male succession is the foundation for Japan to keep its own traditions," said Nobuko Takemura, a 64-year-old housewife as she read a commemorative newspaper in downtown Tokyo.

Revelers toasted with sake and danced in celebratory red and white costumes in Tokyo's Mejiro neighborhood, where Kiko grew up in a middle-class apartment and met her husband in a bookstore.
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