Hello everyone, I am Yu Tianren, and most of my friends call me "Old Ice". Today we are going to "circle a useful circle" to talk about the imperial family problem that Japan is now facing. On December 22, a panel of experts formed in March of this year, at the request of the Diet, handed over a report on how to stabilize Japan's succession to the throne to Prime Minister Kishida Fumio.
The so-called royal family problem is the problem of "lack of successors". The current imperial family of Japan is a direct descendant of Emperor Meiji. Emperor Meiji had only one son, Emperor Taisho had four sons, the eldest son, Emperor Hirohito, had two sons, the younger son, Prince Takahito Mikasa, had two sons, and the middle two had no descendants. The problem is that in the next generation, the two sons of Mikasa Palace have given birth to daughters, which can not be counted. Of the two sons on Emperor Hirohito's side, the younger son, Prince Masahito of Akiragu, had no descendants, and the eldest son, Emperor Akihito, had two sons, now Emperor Naruhito and Prince Fumihito of Akishinomiya.
Emperor Naruhito had no sons, and Akishinomiya had a son, Prince Yuhito. In other words, there are only 17 Japanese imperial families, of which 5 are men. The current Emperor Naruhito and his father, Emperor Akihito, the former Emperor, his younger brother Prince Akishinomiya Fumihito, his nephew Prince Yuhito, and his uncle Prince Masahito of Tokiji Palace.
After the birth of Akishinomiya in 1965, it was only after 41 years that Prince Yujin was born in 2006, and there were too few males in the imperial family, so there was a crisis of heir to the throne. The first article of Japan's current "Imperial Family Model" stipulates that "the throne shall be inherited by a male male with imperial blood." There are five eligible men, one is already the emperor, one is Emperor Akihito who abdicated because of his old age and frailty, and the other is the 86-year-old brother of the abdicated emperor, Tokijigu, all three of whom cannot be regarded as heirs, in fact, the heir to the throne is the 56-year-old emperor's younger brother Akishinomiya and his 15-year-old son.
Akishinomiya is only five years younger than Emperor Naruhito, and in fact, there is not much hope of succession, which means that there is actually only one heir to the throne. There are unpredictable storms in the sky, who knows what will happen, if a royal family is only tied to one person, it is too dangerous. Without a male heir, wouldn't it be enough to introduce a female emperor system?
Is it because the Japanese are too patriarchal and opposed to female emperors? In fact, it is not only Japan that prohibits the queen, in fact, women in the Salic law of European countries have no inheritance rights, from 1714 onwards, the King of England is now the Grand Duke of the Duchy of Hanover in Germany, but since 1837 it has given up this position, because the Duchy of Hanover is the implementation of the Salic law.
Women could not succeed to the throne, and the English did not practice the Salic Law, and a Queen Victoria was born that year. In fact, Japan has had female emperors, and there is more than one, there have been four in total.
The problem in Japan is that people can still accept female emperors, but they can't accept female emperors. What does "femininity" mean? For example, just said that after the death of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, her son Edward VII succeeded to the throne, and after the death of the current Queen Elizabeth II, the successors, whether it is Prince Charles or Prince William, are her descendants, which is called the female line.
The problem for the Japanese is that they can accept female emperors, but they cannot accept female emperors, which means that they cannot accept someone whose father is not the emperor as emperor. This is a problem, what to do? In fact, the following is always saying, but the top is able to hide and hide, because it is too troublesome. In 2005, Junichiro Koizumi wanted to do this, but this matter is really difficult to do, because you will quarrel with any plan you come out, and it will definitely cause a blow to the Koizumi cabinet that was highly respected at the time, but at this time, the news of the pregnancy of Concubine Akishinobu came out, so everyone stopped arguing, and when the news came out, it was just a boy who at least saw the crisis in front of him lifted.
No one ever mentioned it again.
This time it was because of the marriage problem of the former princess of the eldest daughter of qiu shinobu palace, which made people mutter something about the qiu shinobu palace family, and this problem could not be ignored. There were two proposals, one was for female members of the royal family to stay in the royal family after marriage, and the other was for male members of the old royal family to be adopted sons.
The current system is that the royal princess loses her royal status when she marries out, and there are even fewer royals who are already short of people, and staying within the royal family after marriage can increase the number of people, but it has nothing to do with inheritance. The second article deals with the succession to the throne, but in fact, when Japan was defeated, there were 11 other royal families in addition to Emperor Hirohito and his three younger brothers.
At that time, MacArthur did not directly order the reduction of the royal family, but most of the land, forests and securities owned by the original royal family were nationalized, so that without money, the original royal family could not be maintained, so the 11 families were separated from the royal family. Those 11 families all had royal succession rights in the past, so now recalling the royal family in the name of the adopted son will not at least attract opposition in terms of blood, so this is a possible solution. Of course, it is certainly not possible at once, and it is necessary for the whole society to discuss and reach a basic consensus.
That's it for today, thank you.