Japan’s teen Princess Aiko misses school for a month for health reasons

The teenage daughter of Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako has missed one month of school with an unidentified medical complaint, according to the Imperial Household Agency, a worrying echo of her mother’s stress-induced ill-health since marrying into the imperial family.

Princess Aiko, 14, has been absent from the elite Gakushuin Girls’ Junior High School since September 26, an official of the agency told the media on Tuesday.

She has undergone medical tests at the Hospital of the Imperial Household but doctors have not been able to identify any health concerns, the official added, putting the problems down to “fatigue” as a result of examinations since the summer vacations and training for the school’s sports day.

Aiko, known as the princess who rarely smiles, was unable to attend school for a spell in 2010 after being shocked at the “rough behaviour” of some boys in her grade at her primary school. When she eventually returned to class, for a couple of hours a day, her mother had to go with her.

Princess Masako, whose husband is next in line to assume the Chrysanthemum Throne, has had her own problems brought on by stress, since their marriage in June 1993. She has been undergoing treatment for more than a decade for an ailment that the agency that is truly the power behind the throne will only go as far as to admit is an “adjustment disorder”.

The princess was due to travel on Sunday with the Crown Prince for a ceremony in Iwate Prefecture, north-east Japan, but was forced to cancel due what officials described as weariness.

The imperial family is still largely revered among ordinary Japanese, but there are growing concerns about the pressures on the young royals and that Princess Masako may have unwittingly passed on the stresses of life at court to her daughter.

“Life can be very difficult for any teenage girl, but Princess Aiko is in an even harder position,” said Makoto Watanabe, a lecturer in communications and media at Hokkaido Bunkyo University.

“In the past, the children of the imperial family received special treatment from teachers and fellow students at school and university, but that has changed as society has changed,” he told South China Morning Post.

“There’s a gradual erosion in modern Japan for the institution of the imperial family, so Princess Aiko is facing some pretty serious and confusing contradictions as she is growing up.”

Other members of the family have dealt with those contradictions far better - Princess Mako of Akishino, granddaughter of the Emperor and Empress, completed a one-year post-graduate course in museum studies at the University of Leicester in 2015, during which she managed to keep her title a secret from other students - but some of Princess Masako’s worries may be rubbing off on her daughter.

“These are people who live very cloistered existences, are under the spotlight and constant pressure and whose lives are completely controlled by the bureaucrats of the Imperial Household Agency,” Watanabe said.

“This is an institution that is old-fashioned and difficult to understand to a young person, and Princess Aiko is probably realising that now.

“Look at the problems the Emperor’s announcement that he wants to abdicate has caused,” Watanabe points out. “He’s an elderly man, not in the best of health and he has said he wants to step down. That’s entirely reasonable and the Japanese people support him. But the government has set up a panel to look into changing laws to let him do that.

“It should not have to be like this; he should be able to abdicate,” he added. “There are too many contradictions in modern Japanese society for a traditional and conservative imperial family and an agency that controls its actions.”

Additional reporting by Associated Press