Soon, a Japanese Empress?

Atotal of 90 per cent of respondents in a recent Kyodo News poll said they would support the idea of a reigning Empress of Japan. A big change from past years.

The results of the survey, conducted in March and April ahead of the fifth anniversary of Emperor Naruhito’s ascension to the throne, clearly show that the majority of the Japanese public approves of expanding the right to rule to women, given that the imperial succession is currently limited to men from the paternal line. Japan’s imperial family has been struggling with a shrinking number of male heirs, and that is what has ignited a national debate.

In the survey, 72 per cent of respondents said they felt a “sense of crisis” regarding the stability of imperial succession. The 1947 Imperial House Law limits heirs to a male, with an emperor on his father’s side, and stipulates that female royals leave the imperial family upon marrying a commoner.

But Emperor Naruhito, 64, has only three possible male heirs — his brother, Crown Prince Fumihito, 58, his nephew Prince Hisahito, 17, and his uncle Prince Hitachi, 88. The emperor and Empress Masako have only one daughter, the 22-year-old Princess Aiko.

In 2021, a government panel tasked with studying ways to ensure stable imperial succession shelved a decision on whether to make women, or matrilineal members, eligible to ascend the throne. Representatives of parties from across the political spectrum are now expected to convene a meeting in early May to address the issue. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan appears to be inching toward changing the law to expand the imperial family and head off a succession crisis in the world’s oldest monarchy.

Traditionalist hard-liners had previously resisted change. But the party now finds two proposals, first suggested in 2021, as “reasonable” and “do-able”. One possible suggestion would permit female members of the imperial family to retain their royal status after they marry instead of becoming commoners, thus maintaining their ability to produce a male heir to the throne. The second suggestion is to reinstate branches of the family that were lopped off shortly after Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, as the occupation authorities sought to dramatically reduce the influence of the emperor. Adopting those branches back into the imperial family would give it a far larger pool of descendants of the emperor and a far greater likelihood of a male heir.

For the record, Japan has had eight reigning empresses from a patrilineal line, with the last occupying the throne in the 18th century. However, there has never been a single emperor from a matrilineal line among the 126 emperors in history. The law prohibiting female emperors, interestingly, dates back only to the Meiji period in 1889, when Japan had reopened to the West and modelled its new government on Prussia, which had banned emperors of female descent.

In 2005, the modern ban on female succession looked likely to be scrapped under then-prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. But, while the debate was actually underway in the Diet (Japan’s parliament), the news broke that Prince Akishino Fumihito — Naruhito’s younger brother — and his wife Princess Kiko were expecting another child. The reform discussions ground to a halt. And when Prince Hisahito was born, the first new male member of the imperial family in nearly 41 years, the whole debate was placed on the back burner.

As things stand today, the Crown Prince is first in the line of succession. His son, Hisahito (18) is next. It looks highly unlikely that Princess Aiko, the daughter of the current emperor, would get to upstage the current line-up of successors and ascend The Chrysanthemum Throne as Empress. Half of the respondents who supported the idea of a reigning empress in the aforementioned survey stated that gender differences were not important concerning the top role. Meanwhile, the most common reason for disapproving of the idea, cited by 45 per cent of those against the concept, was the belief that male succession was culturally more appropriate.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, some say, is to blame for wasting opportunities to secure the imperial family’s future during his eight years in office. Abe reportedly refused to acknowledge the urgency of the issue. Postakihito’s abdication, he firmly stated that no legal changes would be needed for another 40 years, given that Naruhito has two male heirs, declaring that a “divine wind” would blow when the time came for action.

For now, it is surely advantage Hisahito.