Hierarchical neutrino masses and large mixing angles from the Fritzsch texture of lepton mass matrices

We show that the Fritzsch texture of lepton mass matrices can naturally lead to the bi-large flavor mixing pattern, if three neutrinos have a normal but weak mass hierarchy (typically, m₁:m₂:m₃1:3:10). The effective mass of the tritium beta decay and that of the neutrinoless double beta decay are too small to be observable in this ansatz, but CP violation at the percent level is allowed and could be measured in long-baseline neutrino oscillations.