Stealing a look behind the "Chrysanthemum Curtain" into the mysterious world of the Japanese royal family, Princes Masako details the pressure that the Royal Household Agency has placed on the princess to produce a male heir and prevent the world's oldest dynasty from dying out." "Some thought the princess would be a breath of fresh air in the musty corridors of this 2,600-year-old monarchy, but thirteen years later and now at age forty-two, Masako is a tragic figure whose struggles with depression have made international headlines. This book reveals the impact that the recent birth of a male son to her sister-in-law Princess Kiko has had on Masako's troubled life and on any hopes she might have had for her daughter, little Aiko, to be Japan's first empress." "Ben Hill's portrait of Princess Masako and the Chrysanthemum Throne draws on research in Tokyo and rural Japan, at Harvard and Oxford, and on more than sixty interviews with Japanese, American, British, and Australian sources - Masako's and Naruhito's friends, teachers, and former colleagues. Many of them have never spoken publicly before, and they now shed light on the royal family's darkest secrets, secrets that can never be discussed openly in Japan because of the reverence in which the emperor and his family are held. Princess Masako poses questions that few in Japan would dare to ask, about the role of the emperor, the place of women, attitudes toward mental health and IVF, and the power of the bureaucracy. But above all, this is a story about a love affair that went tragically wrong