Like father, like son: crown prince could get political
With Emperor Akihito stepping down in the next few years, his son could become a thorn in Abe’s side
For virtually all his 56 years, Crown Prince Naruhito has been in the background.
And while protocol demands that the emperor avoids any form of embroilment in politics, analysts here believe a newly crowned Naruhito could follow his father’s lead and, in the coded language of the Imperial Family, make his feelings clear on some of the more nationalistic policies of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
That, it is clear, could provide an unwelcome headache for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“The emperor is not about to step down immediately, but I see these reports about his abdication as coming from within the Imperial Household Agency as a message to the government,” said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at the Japan campus of Temple University.
“And that message is that there are no provisions in the constitution as it stands for an abdication, so they need to get that sorted out.”
The impetus for the debate to be opened will have come directly from the emperor, who is 82 years old and has been given a lighter work load in the last couple of years. He underwent an operation for prostate cancer in 2003, followed by coronary artery bypass surgery in 2012.
The emperor’s health has not, however, stopped him from expressing his opinions – in polite but unmistakably pointed language – on some of the present government’s ideas and policies.
All the signs are that he is intelligent, sincere and thoughtful, and that will serve him well
When, for example, Abe used the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war to declare that modern-day Japan had been built on the sacrifices of the millions who had died in the conflict, the emperor’s riposte the following day was to aver that the nation’s prosperity was a testament to those who had rebuilt it after 1945.
“It was delivered with plausible deniability that the emperor was getting involved in politics, but the message was very clear indeed,” Kingston told the South China Morning Post.
And he anticipates that the Crown prince will adopt a similar approach to communicating with a public that still holds the Imperial family in high esteem.
“All the signs are that he is intelligent, sincere and thoughtful, and that will serve him well,” Kingston said.
“It is likely that he shares the same qualities and inclinations as his father and although he undoubtedly realises that he will be operating under the thumb of the agency, I am confident he will let it be known where he stands on certain key issues.”
And Kingston believes that a younger, fitter emperor could become a more high-profile leader of those who oppose revisions to Japan’s war-renouncing constitution, even though he is restricted in what he can say openly.
“Like his father, he will have his own vocabulary, but that will not stop him making it eminently clear how he feels,” he said.
Jun Okumura, a visiting scholar at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs, agrees that the crown prince will express his own feelings after he assumes the throne: “He’s from the same mould as his father, but I feel he is probably even more willing to issue these coded messages than the present emperor has been.”
