Japan‘s parliament on Friday altered the imperial succession laws, making a change designed to safeguard against the eventuality of the only young male prince left in the family line failing to have a son.
The imperial family household’s numbers have famously been dwindling for decades, not least because of rules that exclude all female heirs and their children from the purely patrilineal line of succession.
Opinion polls suggest that the compromise reached by parliament — while endorsed by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi — is unpopular with much of the wider public, who would rather see Emperor Naruhito’s daughter inherit the throne.
Why is this an issue?
Naruhito, a 66-year-old who acceded to the Chrysanthemum Throne in 2019, and his wife Empress Masako have one child, 24-year-old Princess Aiko. She cannot inherit the throne under the current system.
Naruhito’s younger brother Akishino (also known as Fumihito) is next in line to the throne, and himself 60 years old. He has two elder daughters and only one son, 19-year-old Prince Hisahito, who is the last male heir in the bloodline as it stands and the only man aged under 60.
If Hisahito, who is not yet married, did not have a son, the line would end.
What rules about imperial succession have and have not changed?
The reforms to Japan’s succession agreed on Friday make no change to the purely patrilineal nature of the line of succession.
This means that Princess Aiko and her children will remain ineligible to ever accede to the throne, even in the event of the male line ending.
Two other rules have been altered instead. Firstly, Japanese princesses will be permitted to marry “commoner” husbands in future without losing their royal status. This issue came to the fore in 2021 when Fumihito’s daughter Princess Mako married her university sweetheart and gave up her royal titles.
Princess Aiko is also currently unmarried.
The rule change that seeks to enable the possibility to recruit more men to the bloodline is more complex and contentious.
The bill allows the royal family to adopt distant male relatives aged over 15 back into the imperial family — as long as they are unmarried — and for their future sons to become eligible heirs to the throne.
A total of 11 families left the imperial register after Japan’s defeat in World War II, to alleviate the financial burden on the monarchy. Those eligible to be adopted back into the fold only share a common ancestry with Emperor Naruhito if tracked back to the 15th century, or more than 30 generations, according to the Imperial Household Agency.
Why are the changes contentious?
Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, is an advocate of the male-only line of succession, but she faced resistance even from the backbenches of her own center-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Seiichiro Murakami, a veteran of the conservative LDP, said after the bill passed the lower house on July 10 that it was “utterly outrageous” to rule out Aiko becoming emperor.
Hideya Kawanishi, a professor at Nagoya University and expert in Japan’s royal family, told the AFP news agency that the bulk of the LDP had an “overriding goal” of preserving the male line.
“This is because the solid conservative base that supports them harbors attitudes akin to male chauvinism, and this measure was probably necessary in order to secure their votes in elections,” he said.
But the professor also said he believed the amendments risk “undermining public support for the symbolic Emperor system,” as they might not reflect public opinion — something recent polling also suggests.
A survey published by Japanese daily Mainchi Shimbun last month found that only 23% of respondents approved of adopting distant relatives, with 34% opposing and the largest portion declining to voice an opinion. But by contrast, it found that 72% of respondents said they would favor changing the rules to allow women to be emperor.
Has Japan ever had a woman emperor?
Yes, several — but not in modern Japan.
Given that the bloodline is mythically counted as dating back more than 2,500 years, and to be descended from the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu, it is difficult to distinguish between reality and legend, especially in the earlier centuries.
In the full list of all 126 Japanese emperors — real, legendary, or otherwise — 12 were women.
Women emperors became much rarer as the centuries went by, but still two women sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne in the Edo period alone, most recently Empress Go-Sakuramachi from 1762-1771.
The rules that formally excluded women from eligibility to be emperor only date back to 1890 and the era of the Empire of Japan that ended with defeat in World War II.
Edited by: Rana Taha
Don’t let the algorithm hide the news. If you rely on our team for trusted reporting, please take a moment to select us as your Preferred Source on Google, so you’ll always see our verified news first.