Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,

the past brought to life by those who were there.

This week the royal scandal that rocked the Netherlands.

He said, don't you know you silly ones that I have a second extramarital daughter?

No actually, our dear prince, we do not know that.

Also from the 1980s how a light was shone on Britain's shocking rates of child abuse.

I think people didn't realize how widespread child abuse actually is.

50,000 attempted cause were made to childine that night.

Plus the moment German occupation of the Channel Islands ended.

It's the most wonderful thing in the world, isn't it freedom? You know you don't appreciate your freedom really until you haven't got it.

And we've got a very surprising bit of Cold War history later in the podcast. But we begin this week with a

story which reflects on a number of aspects of life in Japan. The contraceptive pill for women

was developed in 1960 and over the next decade or so was approved for use in many countries all over the world, but not in Japan.

There women would have to wait until 1999 to be allowed to take oral contraceptives.

Rebecca Kessby has been speaking to one woman who made it her life's work to fight for the

right to take the pill.

The

I think so I was going to go and pill.

I am the sort of person, the more of the person that the more resistance I face, the more motivated I am.

Yuriko Madoka is a politician who served in the upper house of the Japanese Parliament

between 1993 and 2010.

As one of the few women in politics at the time, she made a point of speaking up for women's

...