Japan’s royal conundrum: put an empress on the throne or risk Imperial Family’s extinction?
- Although the Japanese public is in favour of allowing a woman to become the head of the Imperial Family, the governing LDP is firmly opposed
- A government panel is looking into the issue of royal succession, but few expect a solution, with the risk being that the Imperial Family runs out of heirs
“It’s unpopular with the traditionalists, but changing the law to have an empress would be the easiest and quickest way out of the problem of the imperial family running out of male heirs to the throne,” said Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University.
According to a public-opinion poll conducted last year, 85 per cent of Japanese were in favour of allowing a woman to become their empress. Unfortunately for that clear majority, decisions in the Diet are dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party, which remains implacably opposed to an empress.
Murakami admitted that it had become “such a politicised issue that I think it will be difficult, at least in the short term, to revise the law to let a woman become empress.”