Sympathy turns to scepticism as courtiers whisper princess does not do her duty [View All]

[kskiska]

Source: Times Online

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.

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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 in 2006 solved the succession problem for the time being and eased some of the pressure on Masako. She still carries out very few official duties on the grounds that doctors have advised against it.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5010291.ece