No Male Heir Is Apparent, So Japan Shifting

TOKYO —  Crown Princess Masako has been resting since December, when it was announced that she was suffering from shingles, an illness commonly associated with stress.

“Since my marriage, I have tried to do the best I can under huge pressure in an unfamiliar environment,” she said in January, blaming her ill health on the difficulties of her role as princess.

Her husband, Crown Prince Naruhito, was more blunt at his birthday news conference in February. “The issue of the succession is one that has entailed a great deal of pressure in various forms,” he said.

The Netherlands, Sweden and Norway have done it, but in this famously conservative society, any effort to open the door to a female monarch is a touchy topic. There is the perennial hope that there will be a male heir.

But that hope has been all but extinguished. All nine children born into the imperial family in the last 35 years have been girls. Under the current Imperial Household Law, only Emperor Akihito’s two sons -- 44-year-old Naruhito and his brother, Prince Akishino, 38 -- are in line to succeed before the throne reverts to an elderly uncle and cousins who are likely to die before the two princes.

That has forced Japan to consider changing the law so that 2-year-old Princess Aiko, the only child of Naruhito and Masako, can one day become empress. She would become the country’s first reigning true empress in more than 200 years, ending a tradition of succession that some believe dates back 2,600 years.

“There is no doubt that Japan faces a succession crisis and must change the law to get around it,” said Hidehiko Kasahara, a law professor at Keio University. “Long ago, there was a concubine system to provide male heirs, but that was abolished. Even if one of the princes does have a son, the same problem will probably occur again. Little by little, the principle of male succession has been undermined.”

That slow process of change, which in some ways reflects how women’s roles have shifted over the years, is beginning in Japan’s committee on constitutional change. The panel is expected to report to parliament next year on such matters as the succession law. In December, Chairman Taro Nakayama told the Sankei newspaper that the committee was moving toward recommending recognition of a female empress in its final report to parliament.

“In parliament, there is a majority in favor of recognizing a reigning empress. I estimate that between 60% and 70% of MPs agree,” said Hajime Funada, a panel member from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. A simple majority would be sufficient to amend the law of succession.

It is, of course, still possible that Naruhito and the 40-year-old Masako may have a son. But 11 years of marriage -- and expert medical help -- has so far produced a miscarriage in 1999 and Princess Aiko in 2001. The younger prince, Akishino, has only daughters: 12-year-old Princess Mako and 9-year-old Princess Kako.

“If there is another big clamor about the succession, it will put even more pressure on Princess Masako,” says Kensuke Yokoyama, a 35-year-old Tokyo salaryman. “To avoid that, I definitely want Japan to move toward accepting a female monarch.”

Japanese public opinion has come to overwhelmingly accept the idea of a female monarch. A poll last year by the nonpartisan Japanese Assn. for Public Opinion Research showed 76% accepted the idea of a reigning empress and only 10% preferred a male monarch. That compares with 53% in favor and 24% against just four years ago.

Many Japanese women say the ban on female succession is out of step with the times. “It is high time to change the law now that we have made such strides toward sexual equality,” said Sayoko Mizutani, a 44-year-old homemaker. “There are many women thriving in the workplace and women combining work with raising children. I think it is clear that a woman could handle the role of emperor.”

The post-World War II imperial family has carefully avoided making controversial political statements, even about its own future. Nevertheless, observers believe the family is open to change.

“There is no doubt the palace is preparing for female succession,” said Ken Ruoff, director of Japanese studies at Portland State University in Oregon, who is in Japan researching the monarchy. “They have sent out important signals and done the groundwork by blurring gender roles. The biggest way it has done this is through Empress Michiko, who has by far the highest public profile of any Japanese empress in modern times, perhaps ever.”

Many Japanese believe it is the imperial women who give the monarchy much of its charisma. Masako in particular is admired for her elegance as well as her intelligence. A diplomat before she married the prince, she was educated at Harvard, Oxford and Tokyo universities.

In the past, imperial women remained mostly in the shadows. Empress Nagako, the wife of Emperor Hirohito, had little public visibility, and many Japanese had been unaware that she was still alive when they heard of her death in 2000, at age 97. It was mostly in the last decade that the women have come to the fore, with the emperor’s daughter, Princess Sayako, making official visits to 14 countries and Empress Michiko accompanying her husband on official trips and even making the first solo trip overseas for an empress when she attended a conference on children’s books in Switzerland in 2002.

Politicians and academics in favor of change have emphasized that Japan has had eight reigning empresses and that the law banning female succession dates only to the mid-19th century.

“Twenty years ago, the average Japanese wouldn’t have been aware that there had been eight empresses in the past,” Ruoff said. “Now people know there is a historical precedent. It is a pattern we often see in Japan, where reforms in the present are couched in terms of history, and change is represented as tradition.”

Each previous empress was essentially a regent, or substitute. They performed the traditional Shinto religious rites of the emperor but lacked the high profile emperors have had since the mid-19th century.

“What the previous reigning empresses all had in common is that they were widowed or unwed,” noted Keio University’s Kasahara. “The throne did not pass on to the empresses’ children or grandchildren, but would revert to a son born through the male line. The principle of male succession remained intact.”

An Empress Aiko would not be unprecedented, but it would be a breach of tradition for her child to inherit. Some royalists believe the imperial line has passed unbroken from son to son for 2,600 years, right back to the creation of the first emperor by the sun goddess.

“There are lots of taboos around the imperial family, and information is controlled,” said Yuji Otabe, a professor at Shizuoka University of Welfare and a specialist in the modern history of the Japanese royal family. “Even researchers can only get basic and mundane documents, and the media don’t want to make committal comments or actively address problems related to the imperial family. Detailed information is hidden behind the Chrysanthemum Curtain.”

Parliament member Funada says change should occur only after careful consideration of the little-discussed practical problems that could ensue. For example, women in the imperial family currently cease to be royals upon marriage, thus keeping the family small. But if the law is changed to give imperial daughters equal status, there would be rapid growth in the number of imperial houses, each entitled to official residences and stipends. The tax burden would balloon.

The problem that causes the most concern is the distant but inevitable need to find a suitable consort for an Empress Aiko. The difficulties are likely to surpass even those faced by European royals. For one thing, Japan has no titled aristocracy to provide a pool of candidates. Also, a husband would have to be strictly apolitical and uncontroversial to fit the imperial role. A foreign royal might be the ideal choice, but Japan is as yet unlikely to accept the idea of a mixed-blood monarch.

But the problems involved in reform are minor compared with the barriers against maintaining the throne under current law and tradition.

Without a royal son, the only options would be to re-ennoble old branches of the family to make them eligible to succeed or for the family to adopt a distant cousin. Such solutions are thought to be unacceptable to the public and so controversial that ultraconservatives who might favor them do not air them.

Unknowingly, little Aiko is the one injecting a measure of urgency into the process.

“I can’t say how long it will take to change the law, but it has to be resolved soon,” Kasahara said. “There is a huge difference between Princess Aiko becoming an empress and becoming a commoner on marriage. If she is to be empress, the contents of her education have to be completely different. She will have to learn all the rituals of court and imperial ceremonies. That education has to start at an early age.”