Now everyone is hoping Masako comes safely to term. It’s a touchy topic; overheated media coverage was blamed for contributing to the 1999 miscarriage. Last April, before the official announcement, the palace said the princess was “showing signs of pregnancy” and warned the press to watch “quietly.” Since then, Masako has kept a low profile. An official at the Imperial Household Agency says, “Her condition is just fine as usual.” But fertility experts warn that Masako’s example may be giving women false hopes–and that, in any case, few have the support she has. “Princess Masako’s pregnancy is watched over and is taken care of in every little detailed way,” says Dr. Tsutomu Araki, president of the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “Women don’t have to follow her example.”
And yet such a determined effort to conceive is just what Japan needs. The country is desperate for kids; of all its problems, shoshika mondai–fewer children–is the biggest in the long run. Japanese women are staying single and having babies later; the average age of first marriage is 27 (versus 22.9 in 1947), and first birth is 28 (up from 24.4). With an average of 1.35 children per woman, Japan’s birth rate remains among the lowest in the world. And the country is graying at bullet-train speed: more than a quarter of the population will be over 65 in 2020. By then, some population experts worry, Japanese parks will be filled with elderly people sitting on benches–and no children in the sandboxes.
The government has done its best to reverse that trend. Ten years ago the Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology decided to change the age it considered “a delivery at an advanced age” from 30 to 35. “More women worked, enjoyed life and began to have the first baby later,” says Araki. “We checked how the age affected their pregnancies and decided that there was not much difference between women at 30 and 35. But it is most desirable to have the first baby in their 20s.” Since then, the government has convened more than a dozen panels and seminars to talk about shoshika mondai. One outcome: the “New Angel Plan,” which went into effect last year, designed to make child-bearing more appealing by improving working conditions for moms and day-care arrangements for their kids.
But no one can force women to get married and have babies. If anything, the younger generation seems even less inclined than their parents to follow traditional patterns. “I may get married or I may not,” says Yoshiko Shimokoro, 24, director of a TV-film-production company in southern Kyushu. “One thing is for sure: I want to keep working. But I would like to have a baby by 35.” As they say, better late than never. Just ask Princess Masako.
