ABSTRACT
Early Life The news of Akihito's birth was a time of great celebration among the Japanese people. Within court circles, there was considerable pressure on Emperor Hirohito to take a concubine because his wife, the former Princess Nagako Kuni, had provided only four daughters. Had a son not been born, the military may have made the lack of a male heir the official excuse to depose Hirohito because of the emperor's opposition to Japan's increasing militarism at home and abroad. Japanese tradition demanded a continuous, unbroken line of male heirs succeeding the founder of Japan's imperial dynasty, the sun goddess Amaterasu.
