New ‘Male Chauvinism’ Allegations in Government Report on Succession to the Throne
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 Family in 2).
“Discussion to be Postponed Because of
Hisahito” Expert Reads Government's Blank
Answer as "Suspicious”
(President Online, January 30)
The debate on a stable succession plan for
the throne, which has been held at the government's advisory panel, has moved
to a new stage with the Diet. Akinori Takamori, a Shinto scholar and researcher
of the IF, said, "The government's report is in effect a blank answer. It
is hard to understand why the government is postponing the succession to the
throne again when there is only one heir to the throne for the next generation,
Prince Hisahito.
Place for Consideration Moved from Government
to Diet
The issue of the future of the succession
to the throne will affect the future lives of the unmarried members of the IF,
including Their Imperial Highnesses Princess Aiko and Prince Hisahito. It is an
important issue that concerns the fundamentals of the future of the Emperor and
the IF, which occupies a heavy position in the Constitution. As citizens, we
cannot remain indifferent to this issue.
On January 12, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida
handed over to Hiroyuki Hosoda, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and
Akiko Sando, Speaker of the House of Councillors, the report of the advisory
panel that compiled measures to secure the number of members of the IF. The
report was the result of the council's deliberations from March to December of
last year, and was submitted to Prime Minister Kishida on December 22.
This shifted the stage for the issue of
succession to the throne to the Diet.
A supplementary resolution to the Act on
Special Provisions of the Imperial Household Law, which was passed in June 2017
to enable the former Emperor to abdicate the throne, required the government to
consider issues related to the "stable succession to the throne”. The
current report was supposed to include a response to that request. However, the
report ended up being a virtual "blank answer”. This is because the most
important issue was "postponed" by replacing it with another issue,
"securing the number of members of the Imperial Family.
The reasoning behind the postponement
was surprising. The reason given was that "we have to be very careful
about making major changes to the system while the next generation of heirs to
the throne are in place.”
（Means: As long as Prince Hisahito is
here, there is no need to change the system of succession to the throne.)
However, this is a head-scratcher in a
double sense.
Why Postpone Urgent Issues?
First of all, even if we say that there
will be a successor to the throne in the next generation, at present there is
only one, Prince Hisahito, the only son of the Akishino family. That is why it
is necessary to take drastic measures and not postpone them until now, and that
is why the advisory panel was established.
Nevertheless, postponing such measures on
the grounds that "there is only one heir to the throne" is tantamount
to denying the purpose and raison d'etre of the establishment. I would like to believe that they are not just going to sit on their
hands and do nothing until the number of heirs to the throne is zero (!).
Secondly, it overlooks the fact that the
current "structure" of the Imperial Household Law itself has a major
flaw, and that is what makes the future of the succession to the throne so
precarious. This has been seen as a problem from early on. For example, the
following points have been made.
"A succession law that does not allow
for female lineage succession and also does not allow for bastard succession
(illegitimate or illegitimate lineage) is unreasonable."
"The total rejection of the right of
succession by bastards would mean a fundamental change in the law of succession
to the throne."
(Chiyohiko Ashizu, "The Emperor,
Shinto, and the Constitution," Jinja Shimpo, Seikyo Kenkyushitsu, 1954)
Major Changes in Way System Works are Inevitable
The Imperial Household Law of the Meiji era
(1868-1912), for the first time in history, introduced the extremely
restrictive "male lineage" requirement for succession to the throne.
On the other hand, in order to alleviate such a cramped condition, it
authorized the succession of the throne by illegitimate or illegitimate
lineage, based on the premise of the side-chamber system that had existed since
pre-modern times.
The current Imperial Household Law,
however, is a "fundamental change in the law of succession to the
throne" in which the former is retained while the latter is completely
eliminated, of the "mechanisms" that can function continuously only
as a "set" of the limitation of male lineage and the recognition of
illegitimacy and illegitimate lineage. This is a fundamental change in the law
of succession. This has naturally become a predetermined fact that can no
longer be reversed (although the above-mentioned "The Emperor, Shinto, and
the Constitution" advocated the revival of succession by illegitimate and
illegitimate lineage in order to maintain the male lineage).
Therefore, if we want to ensure the stable
succession to the throne and the continuation of the IF, "major
changes" in the "system" are inevitable in order to respond to
the "fundamental changes". The report of the Expert Committee on the
Imperial Household Law issued in November 2005, at the time of the Junichiro
Koizumi Cabinet, was an attempt to meet this challenge head-on (I also
participated in the hearings held by the committee). The recent establishment
of the advisory panel was at the request of the Diet, and was expected to
tackle this issue once again.
However, with the excuses mentioned above,
the Diet is once again trying to postpone the urgent issues that should not be
postponed.
How will the Diet respond to the results of
such a study, which is as good as a "blank answer"? The political
developments surrounding the succession to the throne have clearly entered a
new stage.
The Diet's first response was for
representatives of all political parties and factions to gather at the official
residence of the Speaker of the House of Representatives on January 18 to hear
an explanation of the results of the study from the government side. Among the
questions and answers asked at the meeting, the most noteworthy was the
exchange between the government and Yoshihiko Noda, chairman of the "Study
Committee on Stable Succession to the Imperial Throne" of the Rikken
Democratic Party.
"Sense of Urgency about the Harsh Reality
is Lacked"
The points of Mr. Noda's remarks is as
follows:
(1) The report states, "While there is a next generation successor
to the throne, ......" (quoted earlier, page 6 of the report), there is
only one candidate for the next generation succession to the throne, Prince Hisahito.
Fortunately, nothing serious happened, but there have been accidents such as
the one in which the van in which Prince Hisahito was riding rear-ended a car
in front of him on the expressway in November 2016, and the one in which a
suspicious person with a knife broke into the junior high school attached to
Ochanomizu University, which Prince Hisahito attends, in April 2019. If there
were more than one candidate for the succession to the throne it won’t be a
serious problem, but the report seems lacks a sense of crisis in the harsh
reality that there is only one.
(2)Under the new system that the government is aiming for, the
"spouse and children" of the female members of the IF who will retain
their status as members of the IF after marriage "shall not have the
special status of members of the IF and shall continue to have the rights and
duties of ordinary citizens" (page 10). In that case, their freedom of
political, economic and religious activities must be respected. However, is it
possible to reconcile this with the position of the Emperor and the IF under
the Constitution, which states that they are "symbols of the Japanese
nation," "symbols of the unity of the Japanese people," and
"have no authority over national affairs"?
(3) Under the new system proposed by the government, if a male descendant
of the former IF who has newly acquired the status of a member of the IF
through adoption (but is not eligible to succeed to the throne) marries a
partner after the adoption, will the partner be able to acquire the status of a
member of the IF, and will the child become a member of the IF, or will the
child be eligible to succeed to the throne if the child is a "male"?
Government's Response was All about
"Dodging"
On the government side, Mr. Masashi Onishi,
Director of the Imperial Household Law Revision Preparatory Office, Cabinet
Secretariat, responded to these questions. Unfortunately, however, the answer
was hardly a straightforward one.
In response to this question (1), he flatly
stated that they had discussed the issue with the full understanding that there
would be no more than Princess Hisahito. This means that the
"discussion" was based on optimism and wishful thinking that
"even if the next generation of candidates is only one, we will definitely
be able to go that far.” However, while it is true that we should take all
possible measures to ensure the safety of Prince Hisahito, there have been
occasions in the past when we have actually felt that he was in danger. And
yet, Mr. Noda's awareness of the problem was that considering the accession of Prince
Hisahito to the throne as a 100% certainty was too optimistic in light of the
"weight" of the throne and lacked a sense of crisis. (Recently,
conservative commentators such as Shuji Yagi, who emphasizes the possibility
that Prince Hisahito may decline the accession to the throne, have also
emerged.) The way the government official answered the question reveals the
government's lack of understanding of the current situation.
Moreover, about both the wagon crash and
the break-in by suspicious persons that Mr. Noda cited as actual examples, the
government side said "I cannot recall specifically” ....... These must
have been shocking events that made a strong impression on ordinary citizens,
if they had any interest in the IF. When the person who is supposed to be the
most familiar with the situation regarding the revision of the Imperial
Household Law among government officials is in this state of mind, one cannot
help but feel uneasy about the government's efforts.
The Hurdle for Princess Aiko’s Marriage
Rises Even Higher
As for (2), he also gave an empty answer such
as: "That is exactly what we need to consider, including the discussions
among the Diet members, and we will have to consider the results of those
discussions.” He seemed to be hinting at a "review.”
This plan (which states that "due
consideration must be given to the circumstances of the individual
concerned" [page 11 of the report]) is probably intended to apply to
Princess Aiko and others. However, if such an unreasonable plan were to be
institutionalized as it is, the "hurdle" to marriage would become
even higher than before, as one can imagine.
The answer for 3) was a complete dodge. That’s
when Mr. Noda repeated the same question, "Are you thinking about it that
properly or not?”
The government official replied and got
away, "Thank you very much. That is
what we have discussed at the meeting. ...... In addition, under the current
Imperial Household Law, a child of a member of the IF or a child born to a
member of the IF will become a member of the IF.”
However, if it is unclear whether the
spouse the adopted child marries after the adoption will become a member of the
IF, it is also unclear, of course, whether the child will fall under the
category of "child born to a couple of members of the IF.”
This is an extremely insincere response to
the representatives of the political parties that make up the Diet, the
representative body of the people.
Suspicions of "Trick" Hidden in Government's
Proposal
Moreover, there
is even a possibility that a kind of "trick" is hidden in the
government’s proposal. The reason for this is that, even though the person
concerned is a male, he is not eligible to succeed to the throne because he is
treated as an adopted child, which is prohibited under the current Imperial
Household Law. However, as a result of the "bracketing" of "male
members of the IF," if a national woman marries a male member of the IF,
the provision that allows her to become a member of the IF (Article 15 of the
Imperial Household Law) is applied, and his spouse becomes a member of the IF.
In that case, the adopted child would be classified as a "child born to a imperial
couple" and thus become a member of the IF, and if he is a male, he would
be eligible to succeed to the throne.
It would be unfair to claim that there was
no need to mention this in the report because it can be applied without
changing the rules of the "current Imperial Household Law.
But if that is the way the system is
designed, why did the government continue to dodge Noda's questions to an
unusual degree until the very end?
Did they decide that it would be a bad idea
to reveal this fact "before" the system was established? After all, in
the case of female members of the IF, their spouses and children remain
citizens (even though they are born as members of the IF, just because they are
female), but in the case of male citizens who are adopted as male members of
the IF (even though they are citizens before the adoption, just because they
are male), both the spouse and the child become members of the IF, and if the
child is a "male," he is eligible to succeed to the throne. This
would create a widespread sense of discomfort and opposition among the people
(and the female members of the IF concerned would probably be uncomfortable).
However, if the above assumption is
correct, the method of institutionalizing the system while concealing its
entirety from the people (and the people concerned) is not appropriate for the
revision of the system concerning the Emperor and the IF, which should be the
"symbol of national unity.” It may undermine the people's honest respect
for the IF (and the sense of mission and responsibility of the female members
of the IF).
From now on, the serious efforts of the
Diet and the watchful eyes of the public to support them will be essential.
The above paper is written by:
Akinori Takamori
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