Short Sword, Purple Skirt

Even childbirth is clocked with rigid precision at the Japanese Court, the most meticulous and totally devoid of humor in the world.

One morning last week at 9:50 a.m. exactly Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Nagako was clocked into the temporary structure erected for such occasions, the Imperial Maternity Villa.

Tick-tick-tick 132 minutes passed. Precisely at two minutes past high noon Her Imperial Majesty was delivered of an infant 49 centimetres (1.6 ft.) long and weighing 3,365 grams (7.4 lb.). The municipal siren of Tokyo screeched, the National Radiocasting System went into action, the Official Gazette got out one of its exceedingly rare "extras."

The sex of Their Majesties' fourth child was of national importance because the previous three have been girls (one has died). It was also of personal importance to two charming young people, Crown Prince Chichibu, the Emperor's eldest brother, and Crown Princess Setsuko. Although married for more than two years, they have been obliged by rigid etiquet to have no children, lest they should have a son discourteously ahead of the Emperor. Thus with the greatest national and most exquisitely personal regret it was learned that the babe born last week is another girl. She was at once presented with a short sword, nine and one-half inches long, a symbolic gift from her thwarted father the Emperor, Son of Heaven.

Even if a boy, the babe would still have received a sword, its significance being "to ward off evil." Being a girl, the pink babe was also presented with a purple skirt, "emblematic of femininity." She was then turned over to her two wet nurses, wives of army officers. Diligent, they have been studying Yamato Kotoba, the special court language, for months, will be able to address the suckling princess properly.

Japanese editors carefully pointed out that the Emperor is only 30,* that the Empress attained the age of 29 only the day before her latest child was born last week, and that both Emperor & Empress "still enjoy robust health".

* Born April 29, 1901, he is 29 (the Empress is 28) by Western reckoning; but Japanese hold that everyone is a year old at birth. Japanese think it queer that, since everyone has unquestionably been alive for some time before birth, Westerners cling to the obvious absurdity of reckoning a newborn babe as of zero age.

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