AS JAPAN’S unhappy crown princess remains immured within her palace amid protocol more stifling than the Tokyo summer, friends and courtiers have hinted that the only solution to her plight may be to end her marriage.

The Oxford-educated Princess Masako, 40, has been in seclusion since ceasing official engagements last December. She has let the nation know that she feels mentally and physically exhausted by the pressures imposed on her — not least to produce a son.

Her anguish spurred her husband, Crown Prince Naruhito, 44, to speak out against critics who have made one of the brightest young women in Japan into a recluse. They had “nullified her career as well as her character”, he said.

But his words did nothing to resolve a succession crisis that has put the couple’s happiness in the hands of a clique of courtiers consumed by the need for a male heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne.

The prince and princess married in 1993 and have one daughter. In recent weeks the Japanese media have started to speculate about the possibility of a divorce.

Some friends of the princess think she could free herself in this way, while critics mutter that she is not fit to be empress. The rumours are being fed by official leaks that suggest the Imperial Household Agency is split by rival factions.

One such leak appeared recently in Shincho Weekly, couched in the words of a “royal-watcher”, Toshiyaki Kawahada — a customarily indirect Japanese manner of communicating an unpleasant message.

“Among people connected to the royal family there are some who have told me their opinion that Crown Princess Masako may not be appropriate as a future empress,” he was quoted as saying.

“If this illness goes on for the next five or 10 years, public criticism could arise; so before then, these people suggest, it would be better for the crown prince to divorce.”

Masako gave birth to Princess Aiko 2Å years ago after fertility treatment. Aiko seems a happy, normal toddler, unaware of the clouds over her parents’ love match and her own prospects.

Her arrival did not satisfy traditionalists and the head of the Imperial Household Agency, Toshio Yuasa, has said publicly that the couple should have another child.

For Masako, who was educated at Harvard as well as Oxford before joining the fast track of Japan’s diplomatic service, it was another humiliating reminder that her womb was regarded as more important than her mind.

The agency, which controls the imperial budget, rituals and daily lives of the family, is run by state-appointed bureaucrats and scions of the ancient families who have served Japanese emperors for generations.

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