Japan's throne faces shortage of eligible emperors

Japan’s imperial family is facing extinction due to a shortage of eligible emperors, but some experts say the ideas floated in a government inquiry for boosting the dwindling number of royals are out of touch.

With women barred from the throne under male-only succession rules, the place of Emperor Naruhito, 61, will one day be filled by his nephew Prince Hisahito instead of his only child Princess Aiko.

But if 15-year-old Hisahito does not have a son, the royal family, whose history dates back more than 2,600 years, will run out of male heirs to continue the bloodline.

Polls show the public broadly supports the idea of a woman taking the role of emperor — one that holds no political power under Japan’s post-World War II constitution but carries huge symbolic importance.

However, pressure to stick to long-held tradition from conservative lawmakers and voters, who revere the royals as the perfect example of a patriarchal Japanese family, makes female succession unlikely any time soon.

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Officials are brainstorming possible solutions to the dilemma, and last week a specially commissioned panel submitted two suggestions to the government.

One is to allow royal women to keep their title and public duties when they wed outside the family. Currently, they must leave the family, as former princess Mako Komuro did in October after marrying her university sweetheart.

The second is to allow men from 11 former branches of the royal family abolished in post-war reforms to “rejoin” the direct line through adoption.

The panel’s report recommends that male lineage rules are preserved at least until Prince Hisahito becomes emperor.

But its ideas are “not at all based on the current family system in Japan or ideas about gender equality”, Makoto Okawa, a history professor at Chuo University in Tokyo, told AFP.

“I think the public is wondering what’s wrong with Princess Aiko succeeding the throne,” said Okawa, who researches the imperial system.

Although traditionalists say Japan should not sever the “unbroken imperial line”, their logic is flawed, Okawa argued, because Aiko — who turned 20 this year — is both the emperor’s direct descendent and older than her cousin Hisahito.

Hideya Kawanishi, associate professor of Japanese history at Nagoya University, warned that the panel’s proposals “will not solve the problem fundamentally”.

Some married women might not want to live a restricted royal life, while the adoption of male family members who grew up as regular citizens would be complicated, he said.

The issue has been debated for years — after Aiko was born, a government panel concluded in 2005 that imperial succession should be decided in order of age and not gender.

However, these discussions lost momentum after Hisahito’s birth in 2006, meaning the male bloodline could continue.

But after Mako’s wedding garnered huge attention, one way the debate could be pushed forward is “if the public becomes more interested in the subject, and pushes for discussions”, he said.