Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has submitted an expert panel’s report on imperial succession to the Lower House speaker and the Upper House president even though the document leaves many stones unturned.

It is quite doubtful whether the report can win broad support among Japanese people, at present and in the future.

The report said it would be “premature” to try to discuss any change in the rules of imperial succession while Prince Hisahito, the 15-year-old nephew of Emperor Naruhito and the only young male member of the imperial family, is still so young.

Hisahito is second in line to the throne, after his 56-year-old father, Crown Prince Fumihito, the younger brother of Naruhito, 61.

The report contended that the most urgent challenge facing the nation’s imperial system is how to reverse the shrinkage of the imperial family and said this should be tackled with an approach separate from the issue of succession rules.

The panel made two proposals to deal with this conundrum. One calls for allowing female members of the imperial household to retain their royal status regardless of marriage. The other would allow males from former branches of the imperial family to regain their imperial status through adoption, a measure that is currently not permitted.

The two proposals clearly reflect the fixed idea that only males of the patrilineal lineage should be allowed to succeed to the Chrysanthemum Throne. The panel’s report is insidiously designed to kill the proposal to allow a daughter of the emperor or a child of the female line of the imperial family to succeed to the throne even though this idea is supported by a certain portion of the public.

With regard to the first proposal, the report stated that even if female members of the family are allowed to retain their royal status after marriage, their spouses or children may possibly not be allowed to join the imperial family.

This statement appears to declare that children of female members of the imperial family will never be heirs to the throne even if this requires adopting a convoluted system that could lead to a situation where members of the family live together with commoners.

This approach also runs counter to the expert panel’s avowed mission of coming up with viable ideas for increasing the number of imperial family members so as to ease the burden of official duties carried out by Naruhito.

As for the adoption approach, the report said only males should be allowed to be adopted into the imperial family.

It specifically referred to the males in 11 former branches of the imperial family as potential candidates. Those branches were stripped of their royal trappings and demoted to commoner status through reforms during the era of the Allied occupation of Japan following the nation’s defeat in World War II.

Some experts in the Constitution, during interviews by the panel for the report, argued that this approach could violate the Constitution, which bans discrimination based on “family origin.” But their warnings have been ignored.

The 11 families named in the report branched off from the imperial family some 600 years ago and have been living as ordinary citizens since the end of the war.

In an apparent response to the view that allowing these people back into the fold now would not go down well with the public, the report stated that if males are allowed to become members of the imperial family through adoption they would not be eligible to succeed to the throne.

But it did not refer to the question of whether children born to these families should be deemed imperial heirs, showing a clear difference from its effective snub to the idea of allowing children of female members to ascend the throne.

Even if the second approach is chosen, the long-term sustainability of the imperial succession system cannot be ensured as long as only males with patrilineal lineage can come to hold the throne. People who are adopted into the imperial family and their family members would be under strong pressure to produce male heirs.

In June 2017, both houses of the Diet called on the government to start considering challenges threatening stable imperial succession and related proposals including the establishment of branches of the imperial family headed by female members of the family. The legislature said such discussions should start immediately after Naruhito’s ascension to the throne.

But the previous administrations of former Prime Ministers Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga postponed the work. The belated panel report is far from an effective response to the Diet’s call.

The imperial system in a democratic society can continue to exist only if it is supported by a broad range of the public. With diversity in values among the Japanese expected to grow further in the coming years, it is open to question whether the proposals made by the panel would ensure long-term stability in activities and succession of the imperial family.

Another question for both proposals is how the will of individuals involved should be respected.

Serious nonpartisan debate on key questions about the future of the imperial system is in order.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 13