Japan's Latest Craze

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For families in trouble, babies often represent a last chance at salvation, a belief that somehow their innocence and purity can breathe new life into something gone dull or awry. In the giant, dysfunctional family that is modern Japan, then, the birth of a baby princess on Saturday offers, at long last, a glimmer of hope, some feel-good news to lift the collective spirit and hold out the promise of a national rejuvenation. And maybe even boost the stock market. An absurd notion, sure, but there hasn't been much of anything to cheer about in Japan for, oh, the better part of a decade. "We've only had bad and bleak news these days," says Kaoru Yoshii, 28, who hurriedly logged on to her mobile-phone Internet service to read about the birth when she noticed a merchant hoisting a national flag outside his shop. "It's good to hear some good news like this."

	Should the law be changed to allow a Japanese Empress? Yes No Not sure

The 3.1-kg, 49.6-cm-tall princess doesn't have a name yet. (Emperor Akihito will bestow one this weekend.) But even before the Emperor sent his new grandchild a traditional sword, before the little princess had her first bath in a sacred cedar tub, and before she was outfitted with a hakama, or ceremonial skirt, the expectations for her were high. An economist estimated her birth could generate more than $1 billion worth of consumer spending, including grannies showering gifts on their grandkids. Doctors have predicted a mini baby boom, as parenting-resistant youth, who have given Japan one of the lowest birth rates in the world, decide to do their own procreating, inspired by Princess Masako, 37, and Crown Prince Naruhito, 41. But the happy news also brought its share of confusion. Had Masako delivered a boy, everyone could have comfortably celebrated the presumed safety of the 2,700-year-old imperial line. Only a man can be monarch of Japan. It has taken Naruhito and Masako more than eight-and-a-half years to produce their first child; Naruhito's younger brother, Akishino, 37, has two daughters and no son. Under the current laws, after Naruhito, Akishino and an uncle, no one is in line to ascend to the Chrysanthemum Throne. "I have to say I was disappointed it was a girl," says Naomi Shiraishi, who stood in line Saturday night buying special commemorative crackers near Masako's childhood home in Tokyo's Meguro ward. "I hope she gives it another shot, and that next time, it'll be a boy." Given Japan's current state of psychological flux and funk, a girl seems almost appropriate, certain to trigger soul searching and hand wringing about gender roles, about the long-term viability of the monarchy—in other words, to create one more muddle at a time when it seems that's what Japan does best.

Ever since the end of World War II, when Emperor Hirohito was stripped of his divinity, Japan's royals have used life's milestones to strengthen their bonds with a skeptical Japanese public. Beneath the veneer of respect and admiration for the royals, there is still residual resentment over the role of Hirohito in Japan's wartime aggression. "I don't like the royal family very much," says a 27-year-old journalist who turned down an assignment to cover the royal birth because of her distaste for the imperial system. "It's nice to celebrate the birth, since they have been waiting so long. But it's just a baby. The royal family still has to bear responsibility for World War II." Acutely aware of this lingering sentiment, the royals and the bureaucrats who manage the royal family worked hard to remake the imperial image over the past four decades. It's no accident that Akihito picked a commoner, Michiko, to be his wife, and that she was constantly photographed wearing an apron and surrounded by pots and pans in a kitchen, the model of a Japanese housewife. When Naruhito was born, Michiko banished the wet nurses and the royal couple raised him, and their other two children, themselves. The young prince continued the modernization effort, becoming the first royal to study overseas (at Oxford) and choosing to wed the Harvard-educated Masako, a civil servant at the Foreign Ministry whom he met at a reception. Naruhito attended the delivery and held the baby in his arms moments after the birth. "We might see a picture of Naruhito changing a diaper," says Ken Ruoff, American author of The People's Emperor, about the postwar monarchy. "That would send a message about changing gender roles."

Shortly after Masako's pregnancy was announced, there was a flurry of discussion about changing imperial laws to scrap the requirement that a male take the throne. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi himself said he thought it was a good idea. But last month, a leading Liberal Democratic Party politician, Taro Aso, said such discussion was premature. "We are not at a point where we can assume that no boys will be born in the future," Aso said. Of course, that was before the birth of the princess. The next round of royal debate has begun: Can Japan tolerate an Empress?

Around the Senzoku train station in Tokyo's Meguro, strangers bowed and smiled to one another and shared special editions of newspapers published to commemorate the occasion. BABY GIRL! screamed headlines. Queues snaked around shops selling royal-birth specials. Red lanterns swayed and banners extolling congratulations hung from homes and buildings. Yasuhiko Teraza, 67, and Teruhiko Itoh, 69, both hightailed it here from across town when they heard about the birth on the TV news. "I think it's great that it's a girl," says Teraza, pulling at his gray felt baseball cap. "They've got female royalty in England. Why can't we?" Itoh nodded. "It's not like it would be something new," he says. Indeed, there were eight Empresses before Akihito, the 125th monarch in a line that mythologically, anyway, descends from the sun goddess Amaterasu, the supreme deity of Shintoism. "It's ridiculous we outlaw them now."

Polite controversy is just about the highest emotion generated by the royal family. They don't inspire wrath; nor do they elicit much warmth. "They live in a different world," says 25-year-old housewife Mayumi Masuoka. "How could this possibly have any significant impact?" If they're off the radar screens of most Japanese, that's intentional. The royals have studiously avoided the spotlight and maintained a deliberate distance ever since the end of World War II. They aren't jet-setting royals who play on the beaches of the Riviera or date dashing polo players. They don't have brushes with the law or tattle on one another in the tabloids. They hike in the mountains, ice-skate, pray at temples and cut ribbons at children's hospitals. Naruhito seems like a nice, serious guy, but he doesn't exactly set young girls' hearts aswooning. There was hope that Masako would rattle the gilded cages, but she has faded into royal anonymity. These are, frankly, the world's dullest monarchs.

But a baby can enliven even the blandest of people. "They have been so formal and subdued, they created a huge gap between the average Japanese and the royal family, which drove people to stop caring," says 34-year-old Toshiaki Ozeki, a gym instructor. But Ozeki is a royal convert now. Masako's miscarriage two years ago, Naruhito's obvious anger with the way the news media treated the tragedy and Saturday's successful birth all served to make the royals seem more human, more like Ozeki and his girlfriend, who cope day in and day out with life's ups and downs. "They stopped seeming just like obscure symbols," Ozeki says. "A birth of a child is an amazing thing." Amazing, indeed. This child, the princess, already has done something that once seemed impossible. She saved Japan's royals, temporarily at least—by making them seem normal.