Japanese Imperial Family Today

  The Akishino family is decisively unpopular with the Japanese people despite having the first and second highest ranking male heirs to the throne. Every day, the Internet is filled with criticism of their every move. In February, they are said to face two difficult problems, FRIDAY 　 DIGITAL reported on January 30. The two are Hisahito's higher education and Kei Komuro's bar exam.   First of all, there is the issue of the higher education of Hisahito, the second in line to the throne, who is 15 this year. At present, the issue of his "privileged admission" to Tsukuba University's affiliated high school (Chikuzuke), one of the most advanced schools in Japan, through the "Affiliated School Admission System", is being discussed and is attracting public attention.   This system was introduced by the University of Tsukuba and Ochanomizu University in 2017, and is considered to be a time-limited measure for five years. There will be no acad

  As someone who has run an English-language blog on Japan's Imperial Family, I sincerely hope that the contents of this article will attract widespread interest not only in Japan but also abroad.   The main points of this article are as follows. The government report on the stable succession to the throne has the following problems: (1) The situation in which Prince Hisahito is the sole heir to the throne is extremely dangerous. (2) The design of the system in which female members of the Imperial Family will remain in the IF after marriage, but their spouses and children will remain citizens will further raise the hurdle for female members of the IF, including Her Imperial Highness Princess Toshinomiya Aiko, to marry. 3) The proposal to allow male members of the former IF to immediately become members of the IF, means that their spouses and children will become members of the IF, which is a more male-dominated system than that of the female members of the Imperial Fa

    On January 28th, at a regular press conference, Takaharu Kaji, a close aide of the Akishino family, commented, "I think it is regrettable that such an article should appear at a stage when there is no announcement or anything about her marriage.” He requested that the media refrain from speculating about the marriage and said, "I would like you to watch over her quietly.”   It was only a short time after the fiasco between Mako (30), the eldest daughter of the Akishino family, and Kei Komuro (30) had died down that the second daughter, Kako (27), was reported to be getting married one after another in the weekly magazines.   As for Kako, her passionate love affair with the son of the president of Fuji Express emerged in 2017.   Most recently, at the end of last year, "Shukan Josei" took a close look at a younger man, Mr. A (24), as a potential new boyfriend. He is a graduate of the University of Leeds, where Kako studied from September 2005 to Ju

  At a regular press conference on January 27, Yasuhiko Nishimura, director general of the Imperial Household Agency, the government agency with jurisdiction over the Imperial Family, asked for understanding, saying, "We would like you to watch over the  progress quietly," in response to the string of reports in weekly magazines and on the Internet about the high school that Prince Hisahito, the only son of the Akishino family, will enter this spring.   Prince Hisahito is currently in his third year of junior high school at Ochanomizu University. The high school attached to Ochanomizu University is an all-girls school, so there has been a lot of attention on where he will go to school. Some weekly magazines have reported that he has been accepted to the high school attached to Tsukuba University, which has an "affiliated school admission system" with his current school, without any examination. Mr. Nishimura complained, "How is it that every week there

    It seems that Prince Hisahito, the only son of the Akishino family, has already been accepted to Tsukuba University High School (Tsukufu), according to a report in the January 20 edition of Shukan Bunshun.   According to the report, Hisahito took the entrance examination for the school through a "Affiliated School Admission System" between the school and Ochanomizu University Junior High School, and was notified of his acceptance in the first half of January. The announcement of his acceptance by the Imperial Household Agency is expected to be made in mid-February, the same time as the announcement of acceptance for the general entrance examination so that the public can’t know whether he used the special system or not.   According to the article, the aim of the parents, Akishino and his wife, is to get a recommendation to enter the University of Tokyo (UOT) through Tsukufu. The following is from the article:  

    His Majesty the Emperor of Japan has sent a telegram of sympathy to King Tupou VI of Tonga, who was struck by an underwater volcanic eruption in the South Pacific. The telegram was dated the 19th, the Imperial Household Agency revealed on the 20th. The relationship between the Imperial Family and the Tongan Royal Family is deep, and His Majesty has visited Tonga three times.   In 2006, when His Majesty was Crown Prince, he visited Tonga to attend the funeral of King Tupou IV. He attended the coronation of King Tupou V in 2008 alone and that of King Tupou VI in 2015 with Her Majesty the Empress (then Crown Princess). In addition to the luncheon, they met with Japanese residents and Japanese-Tongans.

  On the morning of January 18, the annual event of the Imperial Household, the "New Year’s Poetry Reading," was held in the Matsunoma Room of the Imperial Palace. The theme of this year's event was "Mado (Window)”. The participants took PCR tests beforehand and took all possible precautions against coronas before the event.   The Emperor and Empress of Japan and eight members of the Imperial Family recited their poems. Among them, Her Imperial Highness Princess Toshinomiya Aiko, the daughter of Their Majesties, who came of age last year and sang for the first time at the New Year's Poetry Festival, wrote a poem about her feelings when she attended the Eton Summer School in England when she was in high school, which drew much praise.   The following is an introduction to their poems and the background of the poems published by the Imperial Household Agency. Each member of the family translated the poems into English by themselves, and Her Majesty the

  Mr. Taro Aso   The ruling Liberal Democratic Party(LDP) Secretary-General Toshimitsu Mogi announced at a meeting of the party's General Affairs Council on January 18 that the party will establish a forum to discuss measures for the succession to the throne, following Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's report to the Diet on the results of an expert panel's study on a stable succession to the throne. It will be chaired by LDP's Vice President Taro Aso, with Mr. Mogi acting as chairman. Mr. Tatsuo Fukuda, Chairman of the Board of Governors, made the announcement at a press conference after the meeting.   Mr. Aso is the elder brother of Nobuko, the wife of the late Prince Tomohito of Mikasa, a cousin of former Emperor Akihito. Nobuko is known for her support of female emperors, as evidenced by the fact that she composed a poem about Her Imperial Highness Princess Toshinomiya Aiko at the last poetry festival. Mr. Aso himself is also said to be flexible in his stance on

  (Added.) As already reported in this blog, information on the high school education of Prince Hisahito (15), the only son of the Akishino family, is a hot issue in Japan right now.   It has been reportedly confirmed that Prince Hisahito will attend Tsukuba University High School (Tsukufu) after graduating this spring from the junior high school attached to Ochanomizu Women's University, which he currently attends.  Note: According to the January 21 issue of Shukan Bunshun, the students who will be admitted to Tsukufu under the "Affiliated School Admission System," which is supposed to be used by Hisahito, were decided on January 8. So Hisahito should have already received his acceptance letter. However, His acceptance will be announced after the general entrance exam acceptance announcement in mid-February so that it is impossible to tell whether he used the Affiliated School Admission System or not. The Daily Shincho, an online news site, reported on January 17 t

    On January 12, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with Hiroyuki Hosoda, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Akiko Sando, Speaker of the House of Councillors, and others in the Diet, and handed them a report compiled by a government advisory panel on the stable succession to the throne. The report focuses on two proposals to secure the dwindling number of members of the Imperial Family: (1) female members of the IF should remain in the IF after marriage, and (2) male members of the former IF should return to the IF as adopted children.   Unfortunately, the report does not go into drastic measures such as the pros and cons of a female or female lineage emperor. This is due to the fact that there are strong calls among conservatives to maintain the male line. There is also a large gap between the positions of the various parties, and with the Upper House elections coming up in the summer, there is a risk that discussions in the Diet will be postponed.   Toshimitsu Motegi,

    In 2021, Japan's imperial family was rocked by the marriage issue between Mako Akishino and Kei Komuro, and a ray of light was shed by the coming-of-age event of the emperor's only daughter, Her Imperial Highness Princess Toshinomiya Aiko.   At the end of the year, there were a series of articles in the Japanese media comparing the "Emperor Family" and the "Akishino Family."   Here is an abridged translation of one of them, written by journalist Masahiko Motoki for President Online on December 22.  

  The choice of high school for Prince Hisahito, the only son of Prince Akishino and second in the order of succession to the throne, was reported spectacularly before Christmas that he would be attending Tsukuba University High School, a top preparatory school. This blog recently introduced the criticism by Mr. Yuji Odabe, Professor Emeritus at ShizuokaUniversity of Social Welfare , and on the 3rd of this month, the Asahi Shimbun-affiliated online media "AERA.dot" carried an interview with Mr. Hideya Kawanishi, a historian and Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Humanities, Nagoya University, who is an expert on the symbolic emperor system. Mr. Kawanishi's argument is as follows:   Prince Hisahito is currently attending the junior high school attached to Ochanomizu University for Women. Ochanomizu Women's University is a coeducational school up to junior high school, but from high school on, it is an all-girls high school, and boys at the school have

    On the 1st, His Majesty the Emperor, together with Her Majesty the Empress Masako, attended the New Year's Celebration Ceremony at the Imperial Palace to receive New Year's wishes from the Imperial Family and the heads of the three-party system.  Her Imperial Highness Princess Toshinomiya Aiko, the only daughter of Their Majesties, who turned 20 last December, also attended the ceremony for the first time. She entered following Their Majesties, wearing a robe décolleté and medals, in the Matsunoma room of the palace. This was Aiko's first official duty after her coming-of-age ceremony. The ceremony began around 10 a.m. Their Majesties were congratulated by the heads of the three branches of government, following the members of the Imperial Family. In the Matsu-no-ma, His Majesty was greeted by the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Speaker of the House of Councillors, to which His Majesty responded, "At the beginning of the New Year, I pray for t

  On the first day of the New Year, His Majesty the Emperor of Japan sent out a video message to start the New Year, expressing his thoughts for those who are facing the new coronavirus as he did last year. His Majesty the Emperor's video message was made in response to the fact that the New Year's General Meeting of the Imperial Family will not be held this year, as it was last year, to prevent the spread of the disease. The six-minute video, released by the Imperial Household Agency at 5:30 a.m., begins with a New Year's greeting by Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress. After this, His Majesty the Emperor spoke about the effects of the new coronavirus, saying that his heart breaks for the many people who have lost their jobs or fallen into 　 difficult living conditions, and that he hopes that many warm hands will be extended to those who need help. “I sincerely hope that we can overcome this difficult situation by sharing the pain and supporting each other, w