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Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako told the media in a statement that they feel distress for causing public concern about their 8-year-old daughter Princess Aiko, who stayed away from sch

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Don't want media attention? Fine, help us get our well deserved Republic by abdicating.

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Not easy to be a princess in our days...

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Umm...Yea. They had no business putting their daughter' school affairs in the public. She will not be able to trust them. Royalty or not. Now, she will think again about telling her parents anything.

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What do you think about all this?

I think this is normal in a country which allows people with no formal training to become language teachers, who also do not require a licence to teach.

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A storm in a teacup. If she were a normal little girl in a normal family, this would all have blown over and been forgotten by now.

The best thing the Crown Prince could do for his family would be to abdicate. Let them all get on with their own lives, and let the bearded one inherit the throne. It's what he wants.

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Normally if you are born into a royal family, it is YOU who would the one going around and bully others, not the reverse!

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I think the boys, and thier families, that were bullying her will mysteriously disappear from world as we know it. Poof!

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I think kids are kids. When we were kids we used to make fun of ugly people. That is how it works. Because they look funny. So it is completely normal and they should stop overprotecting that 8 year old baby. THe more media coverage she gets... the bigger hell it will be for her to go to school. Any school.

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This is all very sad, and I feel very sad for the Royal couple and little Aiko sama. Its a sad reflection on the state of modern Japan, where the culture of bullying obviously permeates the entire social structure of Japan. No-one is safe from the bullies in this country. Japan is a society of bullying. If I were in their shoes, I would remove my daughter from such an institution until such time as the bullies were disciplined and/or removed from the school.

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I think it's all a sinister plot by the IHA to discredit Aiko from an early age so she won't become a serious challenge to her little cousin when the time comes to choose between one of them. Nothing works better than a smear campaign (except perhaps assassination), so why not start young?

Naruhito and Masako are "distressed" not because "they" caused public concern (I'm sure they had nothing to do with this news leaking out), but that neither of them have the balls to stand up to the IHA and are powerless to stop their little daughter from being victimized by the Imperial beast.

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send her overseas to a boarding school.

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I support their decision to make a stand against the bullies. Someone needs to do something to educate Japanese institutions that all sorts of bullying no matter who you are will not be tolerated.

But as benhur suggests I recommend they send her to an overseas boarding school.

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I support their decision to make a stand against the bullies.

Then you support nothing, since there were no bullies, just ordinarily noisy boys; and no one is making any kind of stand against boys being boys.

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Um, who cares?? How about not releasing such pathetic "worries" to the publicn in the first place? That and tell little Ai Sama to deal with the bullies. I think this could have been a great chance to deal with the bully issues in Japan but alas, nothing was done escept her staying home. Nothing solved, nothing addressed.

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I feel bad for the little boys who were acused of making noise and don't feel anything for the royal family.

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Distress? Wouldn't it be more like embarrassment as even the Royal Family is getting bullied at school?

I think it can only get worse. It's not like the Prince and Princess can head over to the offender's house to talk with their parents. And if something is done on an official level against the offenders, people will talk about human rights and bullying of the 'little' people by the Imperial Household.

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She and mom should enter the witness relocation program.

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I think it would be wonderful if she went to public schools. It would show the royal family's support of the polity. They should dump this private school waste of taxpayer money and show that they are part of this nation.

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I think it's all a sinister plot by the IHA to discredit Aiko from an early age so she won't become a serious challenge to her little cousin when the time comes to choose between one of them.

I had a similar discussion the other day. Nothing like salting the media with negative stories to show how the push to retain a male royal heir system was the wisest choice, and you just can't trust those emotional women... ;)

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What a wonderful country we live in when insignificant things like this are all the media has to report on.

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What kind of rough behaviour did she encounter?

Did they pull a knife and ask for her lunch money?

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Did they pull a knife and ask for her lunch money?

You'd think, wouldn't you?

They ran down the corridor shouting and threw a few bags around (not at her, or anywhere near her) - last July. The experience was apparently so traumatic that seeing another boy dashing out of a classroom last month gave her a debilitating flashback.

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Would this kind of thing be tolerated under the Showa/Taisho or Meiji periods? I think not, the daughter would have been told to toughen up while the perpetrator and the family would have been banished to one of the colonies.

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They ran down the corridor shouting and threw a few bags around (not at her, or anywhere near her) - last July. The experience was apparently so traumatic that seeing another boy dashing out of a classroom last month gave her a debilitating flashback.

Umm...hmm...well now... Just pat her behind gently and send her back to school :-)

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I know it is wrong to answer a question with a question, but what I think is simply -- Can any royal family possibly be further removed/isolated from reality than Japan's?

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I think Diddums for her.

Goodness, the royal family should be embarrassed at what a little wimp they are raising. Indeed, she needs to seriously toughen up. If any other student stayed away from school for such an absolutely pathetic reason, they would be in trouble. Why is it okay for her? The royal family want her treated with kid gloves, so they should just educate her at home.

This story infuriates me so much.

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I think the whole affair is unbelievably horrible. How terrible can things get? I still feel great distress and concern about this encounter. Is nobody willing to do anything about this?

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I think that she should just toughen up and go back to school. It sucks that she might encounter bullying, but I'd hardly call what happened bullying.

Public school would probably be too dangerous. They have less security, and believe me, she would be a target for someone out there. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't teach her how to take care of and defend herself. I'd much prefer reading a story about how she beat up all of the boys that dared to teach her.

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I read that she was scratched, kicked, hit on the head and called names. It is amazing that instead of sympathy and protection for an 8 year old who is being bullied, the media and some commentors further victimize her by jeering at her "frailness". A teen cannot overcome a group of bullies, and one recently committed suicide in the Mass., and there have been suicides in Japan as well, how do you expect an 8 year old to fare any better??? Bullying is common in Japan, and it isn't unthinkable for the kids from rich and influential families to bully, and the Crown Prince and Princess have been targeted by a vicious political/media campaign. This too is a form of bullying - in the end, bullying is about power, and the exercise of it over another for the purpose of hegemony and oppression.

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