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Let a woman become emperor to avoid future Japan succession crisis, defence minister says
- A dwindling pool of heirs to the Chrysanthemum Throne is endangering the country’s monarchy, given its current reliance upon male primogeniture
- Defence Minister Taro Kono says an empress could be the answer, but Japan’s social conservatives prefer a more roundabout approach
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Japan’s Defence Minister Taro Kono may have upset the country’s conservatives by calling for women to be allowed to become emperor, but his comments have failed to generate any real debate about the future of the nation’s endangered monarchy.
The veteran politician adopted a position very different from that of the vast majority of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party when he said in an interview last Sunday that the nation needed to consider alternatives to drawing a new emperor from the paternal line of the imperial family, which has been the accepted practice in Japan for more than 1,000 years.
Although Kono said he had no issues with following tradition, he pointed to issues that have arisen in recent years related to a lack of suitable heirs in the imperial family’s male line.
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Emperor Naruhito, who ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne last year, only has a daughter with his wife Empress Masako, and it took several years for Crown Princess Aiko to be conceived. As women are not permitted to become emperor, an impending crisis of succession was only averted when the then-crown prince’s brother, Prince Akishino, sired a son in 2006.
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Now 13-year-old Prince Hisahito is the presumptive heir to the throne and is being groomed to one day become emperor. Yet he too will eventually come under pressure to produce a male heir.
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