Imperial Succession

While I'm on a roll with outdated blog topics, I thought I'd hit this one too. My brother asked me (back in October- sorry bro) what the importance was of the birth of a boy into the Japanese imperial family last fall. I haven’t actually done much bonafide research on the subject, but here’s what I gathered from a broken conversation I had with a teacher the day after it happened, combined with what I imagine a TV show on the subject was about that I “watched” (which was, of course, all in Japanese, so naturally I didn’t understand a word of it, so this entry could be quite entertaining – don’t use it as a source of stone-cold fact).

It seems that the current Emperor’s sons were the last boys to be born to anyone in the imperial family, including the Emperor’s brothers and their children, prior to the baby born in October 2006. So, besides the Emperor’s 2 sons and the Emperor’s brothers (who have to be between 45-75 years old, because the Emperor is up there in years himself), there was no third generation of males to take the throne. Traditionally (no surprise), Japan is a patriarchal society (there is evidence things are shifting towards more gender equality, but that’s still a long ways off, and another topic completely, so back to the subject at hand….), so the Emperor’s throne is passed down through the males in the imperial family. Up until fall, however, the Emperor only had grand-daughters, about which there was a lot of hoopla. Japan was getting nervous about making sure the Imperial line would not end with the Emperor’s sons should there be no males born into the succeeding generation, so the government had started to kick around the idea of changing the “males only” clause for Imperial succession. But then, low and behold, a son was born, and there was much rejoicing in the kingdom. Someone said that after the birth, the government said they wouldn’t kill the issue of changing the succession law, but I’m fairly confident that’s probably just lip-service. So, sorry to the two daughters of the elder son of the Emperor. There’s a new kid in town, and even though he’s the 3rd born of that generation and is the offspring of the younger of the Emperor’s two sons, he’s got a Y-chromosome, so he’s got the trump.

It sounds like I have an opinion on the matter, but I don’t really. I was just trying to make this entry entertaining to read. I think the Japanese Imperial family is like the English Royal family in that they are just there for tradition’s sake anymore but don’t really do much relative to running the country, so they might as well add their own touch of drama to life in Japan. I’m probably completely wrong about their role in the country and sound like a complete idiot right now, so I’m going to go look that up so I can sound edumacated next time I decide to sound-board on the Imperials.