JAPAN: Girl

To the Empress Nagako of Japan was born a sister to her first child, Princess Shigeko Teru-No-Miya. Once again the Imperial Stork had failed to heed the gods of Shintoism and the great call of the great Lord Buddha for a son and heir to the august Imperial throne.

This is little less than a tragedy to the Japanese royal house. Girls in the Orient have no social standing or importance of their own; their position is always derived from the male, either their father or the husband they marry. Therefore, a girl may not succeed to the august throne of Jimmu Tenno, occupied by the present dynasty for 2587 years.

Actually, the line of succession is not endangered by the carelessness of the Imperial Stork, for Hirohito has three brothers—Prince Yasuhito, 25; Prince Nobuhito, 22; Prince Takahito, 11. But nothing can alter the fact that the paramount duty of the Empress is to provide her royal lover with a bouncing baby Crown Prince. The joy of Japan would know no limit, if this happy event should occur.

As it is, partly because the court is still in mourning for the late Emperor Yoshihito, who died last December (TIME, Jan. 3), and partly because there was no disguising the disappointment of the Royal House and the nation in the birth of a second daughter, there will be no great, gay lantern parades, no dancing in the streets, no flowery songs and no flashing oratory, no processions, no fireworks. The new little Princess comes to the Flowery Kingdom unheralded, unsung. Such is the way of the Orient.

Emperor Hirohito sat gloomily in the Imperial Palace at Tokyo thinking of a name for his new baby girl. Imperial priests from the Imperial Sanctuary awaited in the Imperial Palace for the Imperial word; for they were to go to the Imperial Shrine of Ife at Yamada, 200 miles from Tokyo, and report her name to the Imperial Ancestors.