Japan's Crown Princess to take overseas holiday

Tokyo, Jul 28: Japan's Princess Masako will visit the Netherlands next month with her husband and daughter, a rare overseas holiday many see aimed at helping her recover from mental illness caused by the stress of royal life.

She will be accompanied by her doctor on the Aug. 17-31 trip, the Imperial Household Agency said today.

Masako, 42, whose husband Crown Prince Naruhito, 46, is next in line to the Chysanthemum Throne, has been suffering from a stress-related illness many royal watchers attribute to pressure to bear a male heir.

She and Naruhito have one daughter, 4-year-old Princess Aiko, who cannot inherit the throne under a males-only tradition ensconced in a 1947 imperial succession law.

No royal males have been born since 1965.

But Princess Kiko, the wife of the emperor's younger son Prince Akishino, is pregnant with her third child, raising hopes in conservative circles that a boy will be born.

Plans to revise the law to give women equal rights to inherit have already been put off due to news of Kiko's pregnancy.

The Imperial Household Agency has said Kiko's baby is likely to be born through a Caesarean operation ahead of the due date in late September.

That has prompted speculation that Masako's trip is also timed to spare her the strain of celebrations that would ensue should an heir be born.

''This will be very good for both of them,'' said college lecturer and royal expert Midori Watanabe, who has written books on the imperial family.

''It would be a lot of pressure on her and not good for her'' to be in Japan when an heir is born.

Masako, a Harvard-educated diplomat before she married Naruhito in 1993, once hoped to become a sort of ''royal envoy'' to make use of her skills, but conservative courtiers are said to have stood in her way.

REUTERS