Sep 6, 2006

Its a boy, Princess Kiko, it's a boy

Just like in The Who song.

Princess Kiko, the wife of the emperor’s younger son, gave birth to a boy on Wednesday morning, securing the succession of Japan’s imperial throne for another generation.

In an event that had been anticipated for months, the princess gave birth by Caesarean section to a boy weighing 5 pounds, 10 ounces, and measuring 19.2 inches, at 8:27 a.m., the Imperial Household Agency reported. Newspapers here scrambled to print extra editions to mark the birth of the still-unnamed child, the first male born in the royal family in 41 years.

The birth of a male heir will shelve for the foreseeable future a politically explosive debate over whether women should be allowed to ascend the throne. It has solved for now a succession crisis that had taken its most direct human toll on Crown Princess Masako, 42, the Harvard-educated former diplomat whose failure to bear a son contributed to her depression and withdrawal from the public.

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