Bullied Japanese princess misses first day back at school
The princess shunned the opening ceremony of Japan's elite Gakushuin Primary School where she is a third-year elementary pupil after six months of sporadic class room attendance following an incident in March.
After arriving at the school on Monday, the heir to Japan's Chrysanthemum Throne refused to attend assembly and waited in a classroom with her mother, Princess Masako, until it was over.
She then returned home to her father, Crown Prince Naruhito's official palace a short while later.
Princess Aiko started to skip classes in March after being shocked at the "rough behaviour" of some of the boys in her year at school.
She then failed to attend the end-of-year graduation ceremony at the end of the month and was also absent for the April welcoming ceremony for her fellow new third grade students.
Since then she has only attended school for three hours a day, accompanied each time by her mother, and took more days off complaining of a cold.
Palace officials said the princess was having private tuition while not at school.
Princess Masako, her mother, 47, has rarely been seen in public since 2004.
She is suffering from what the Imperial Household Agency has admitted to be an "adjustment disorder," a problem apparently brought on by pressure due to her inability to produce a son to continue the imperial line.
After suffering a miscarriage in 1999, Princess Masako gave birth to Aiko in 2001. The lack of a male heir gave rise a movement to change the law to allow Princess Aiko to succeed her father, Crown Prince Naruhito.
But succession crisis was averted when Naruhito's younger brother, Prince Akishino, and his wife Princess Kiko had a baby boy in 2006. The boy, Hisahito, is now third in line to the throne.
source: telegraph