JAPAN: Sun's Son's Son

When the sacred white silk maternity belt was reverently wound around the person of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Nogako a month ago, all Japan renewed the nation's years of patriotic Shinto prayer for a boy at last—a new Son of Heaven. Auspiciously the Empress's labor grew most severe last week just as Japan's sun was about to rise and burst refulgent on the Imperial Maternity Pavilion, freshly built in the Fountain Garden of Tokyo's moat-encircled Chiyoda Palace. Minute by minute they approached—the Sun Goddess and the Imperial Child—in what to...