Succession and Membership Issues


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
I'm not saying Hisahito will be forced to marry a chosen girl tomorrow. It's illegal anyway (the legal marriage age in Japan is 18 with parents' approval, 20 without parents' approval)

And what is "love match"?

Here's a story:
When he was 16, Michi-no-miya was presented with several selected wife candidates. Those young girls participated in a tea ceremony while he watched them unseen behind the screen. He chose Nagako, 14. They had six-year courtship in which she also underwent education to be a Crown Princess. When she failed to produce a son after a decade of marriage, the court persuaded him to take concubines, but he refused. In the end, she did give birth to two sons.

So is this marriage a "love match" or not (since it was the courtiers sorting through eligible girls for him to choose)?

Who's to know if Fumihito didn't go through similar process, but instead of tea ceremony, the setting was Gakushuin University?

Note: Michi-no-miya is known posthumously as Shōwa-tennō and his wife was Kōjun-kōgō. They're the grandparents of the current emperor.
 
:previous: Interesting, thank you!

I agree that vetting potential wives isn't incompatible with marrying for love, nor out of the question. Didn't many of the Akishino family critics fault Crown Princess Kiko for "letting" her daughter date and marry an unsuitable man? It seems some consider it the family's responsibility to prevent poor choices of spouse. Moreover, in Prince Hisahito's case, the Imperial House Law means that he and his fiancee will require permission from the Imperial Household Council (including government officials and royal representatives) to be able to legally marry, so it would be consistent with that for him to have some official guidance in choosing a spouse.

https://www.kunaicho.go.jp/e-kunaicho/hourei-01.html
 

I will need to find the time to read these fascinating reports more carefully , but this passage caught my eye:


Under the former Imperial House Law, promulgated in 1889, the distinction of having some members only remaining in the imperial family for one generation was abolished. Instead, all descendants of the emperor and the imperial family would be hereditary members. By the end of the Meiji era (1868–1912), there were 13 collateral branches; the Katsura cadet branch had gone extinct, but the number of Fushimi collateral branches had increased. Overall, the rise in the total number of branches may have been caused by Emperor Meiji’s concerns about the succession due to the poor state of health of his son, the crown prince and future Emperor Taishō.

The increase, however, put some financial strain on the imperial family, and new legislation in 1920 was intended to limit its size to those close in blood to the emperor. By this time, apart from the emperor’s immediate relatives, the family consisted of descendants of Prince Kuniie, and the legislation would have removed all of them. However, special exceptions were made for the lines of the eldest sons in each of the branches down to Kuniie’s great-grandsons, while other members were downgraded into the aristocracy. This removed around a dozen members from the imperial family.

For this reason, I think the common critique from royal watchers (western ones at least; I would be interested to know if Japanese royal watchers say the same), of the American postwar occupation authorities' actions in forcing the Japanese authorities to demote the distantly related imperial branches to commoners, is misguided. The imperial family's membership structure has, without any American involvement, evolved over the centuries depending on the social circumstances, and in this case, we see that even before the war, the plan was to prune the number of "backup" lines to lighten the pressure on imperial finances.

And this was 103 years ago. Even if the American occupiers hadn't intervened, does anyone really expect that Japanese taxpayers in the 21st century would still be willing to pay for 14 never-ending royal lines just so that there is guaranteed to always be a male heir on hand?
 
I will need to find the time to read these fascinating reports more carefully , but this passage caught my eye:


Under the former Imperial House Law, promulgated in 1889, the distinction of having some members only remaining in the imperial family for one generation was abolished. Instead, all descendants of the emperor and the imperial family would be hereditary members. By the end of the Meiji era (1868–1912), there were 13 collateral branches; the Katsura cadet branch had gone extinct, but the number of Fushimi collateral branches had increased. Overall, the rise in the total number of branches may have been caused by Emperor Meiji’s concerns about the succession due to the poor state of health of his son, the crown prince and future Emperor Taishō.

The increase, however, put some financial strain on the imperial family, and new legislation in 1920 was intended to limit its size to those close in blood to the emperor. By this time, apart from the emperor’s immediate relatives, the family consisted of descendants of Prince Kuniie, and the legislation would have removed all of them. However, special exceptions were made for the lines of the eldest sons in each of the branches down to Kuniie’s great-grandsons, while other members were downgraded into the aristocracy. This removed around a dozen members from the imperial family.

For this reason, I think the common critique from royal watchers (western ones at least; I would be interested to know if Japanese royal watchers say the same), of the American postwar occupation authorities' actions in forcing the Japanese authorities to demote the distantly related imperial branches to commoners, is misguided. The imperial family's membership structure has, without any American involvement, evolved over the centuries depending on the social circumstances, and in this case, we see that even before the war, the plan was to prune the number of "backup" lines to lighten the pressure on imperial finances.

And this was 103 years ago. Even if the American occupiers hadn't intervened, does anyone really expect that Japanese taxpayers in the 21st century would still be willing to pay for 14 never-ending royal lines just so that there is guaranteed to always be a male heir on hand?
I agree that the government wouldn’t support the 14 branches in our times, but the effect of what the Japanese government did a 103 years ago, versus what the occupying forces did to the succession is so different, the occupying forces wanted to the monarchy to slowly die out by attrition and Japan had to agree to these changes because they lost the war. The motives of the household and government were for financial reasons as you have brought it in the report you read. Plus Japanese royals don’t have children they way they used to, so you have some of the members not having children.
 
:previous: Interesting, where did you read that the occupying forces wanted the monarchy to slowly die out by attrition?
 
:previous: Interesting, where did you read that the occupying forces wanted the monarchy to slowly die out by attrition?
I’m simply describing the end effect of removing the branches and seeing how the succession is affected. The Allied powers and leftists in Japan, wanted to have Emperor indicted and charged as a war criminal just like they wanted to do to Kaiser Wilhelm II in WWI.
 
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