Japan's emperor, empress should work less--agency

TOKYO, Mar 9 (Reuters) Japan's emperor and empress should be freed of some of their official duties, the Imperial Household Agency said, after Empress Michiko was found to be suffering from what appears to be a stress-related illness.

The agency, which handles royal affairs, needs to try harder to take care of the couple and be more attentive to their schedule, a spokesman said on Friday, quoting agency head Shingo Haketa.

Michiko, 72, attended a flower exhibition yesterday, two days after an announcement that she is suffering from what appears to be a stress-related illness.

Officials said she had suffered from mouth ulcers and nosebleeds as well as showing signs of intestinal bleeding, after having a cold last month.

Doctors have attributed the illness to psychological stress, the agency has said, and the spokesman quoted Haketa as saying Emperor Akihito had been saddened by recent tabloid articles on the royal family and that the empress felt the same.

Michiko shattered tradition in 1959 by becoming the first commoner to marry an heir to the throne and won popular acclaim when she chose to raise her three children at home rather than entrust them to nurses.

But she has suffered several bouts of ill health rumoured to have been caused by a strenuous round of duties arranged by the powerful courtiers who organise the lives of the imperial household.

Michiko's woes have been mirrored to some extent by those of her daughter-in-law Crown Princess Masako, a Harvard-educated former diplomat.

Hopes of modernising the royal family rose when Masako married Crown Prince Naruhito in 1993, but the crown princess, now 43, has been unable to carry out most of her official duties for more than three years due to a stress-induced mental illness, blamed by many royal watchers on pressure to bear a male heir.

Masako and Naruhito have one child, 5-year-old Princess Aiko, who cannot inherit the throne under the current males-only succession law.

Last month Japan's Foreign Ministry sought an apology and ''appropriate steps'' from Australian journalist Ben Hills over his book ''Princess Masako - Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne'', protesting at what it called errors and insults.

Reuters SY DB1040