Succession and Membership Issues

[Elspeth]

Welcome to the forums, by the way! Just noticed your join date.

 

[mandyy]

Japan's next emperor must seek new role
Emperor Akihito's father was a wartime symbol of nationalism who became, after 1945, an emblem of defeated Japan's embrace of democracy. Akihito himself has spent nearly two decades trying to soothe the wounds of war.................

But his elder son, Crown Prince Naruhito, risks becoming a symbol of modern monarchical angst unless he can find a new raison d'etre when he finally succeeds his father. "Of all the symbolic monarchies ... none is more restricted than the Japanese. The limits around their role are so strict that it raises the question, 'What are these people supposed to do?'," said Kenneth Ruoff, author of a book recounting the transformation of Akihito's father, Hirohito, from a deity in whose name soldiers fought and died into a symbol of democracy...................
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060608/3/2lmp5.html

 

[Jo of Palatine]

Ralph, did you read that article in Marengo's post? That suggested to me that it would be very unlikely that Aiko would become empress; I'm afraid that if she does, she'll be married off to some imperial descendent in order to produce a son from the imperial line, and as soon as he turns 18 there'll be pressure on her to do what her female predecessors did and abdicate in his favour.

I guess it all depends on the moment that the Crwon Prince becomes Emperor. I read the articles whose links were posted up-thread about the way the IHA works and it seemed to me that the emperor has quite the power within his family and the agency.

I don't believe for a moment that someone can stop the emperor from picking up a phone. Maybe it simply is not done and he uses other channels of communication like ordering a minion to do the call for him but I'm convinced if the emperor wants to contact somebody, he does.

As for the Imperial family - well, here I think the emperor is the one to set the rules. This emperor is obviously quite conservative and does not want his daughter-in-law to perform the public duties she would have been perfect for. He obviously believes that his family's obeisance is his due and that Masako did not fulfill her duties when her only child is a girl.

I doubt, too, that he wants a girl as his son's successor - so as soon as Kiko became pregnant, he probably started hoping for a grand-son.

But - as soon as Naruhito becomes emperor, he is the one the IHA has to obey. He will be the one the government will consult. He can change things, I'm sure about it, it he has the character to do so. There are surely more modern men in the IHA who see a chance of a career on supporting the Crown Prince. There always are people like that.

My impression at the moment is that prince Naruhito bides his time and waits for the moment he will get the power. He dares openly protect his wife and daughter (and the rumours died down after that) but apart from that I think both Crown Prince and Princess know that they can't do anything without hurting too many people. So they simply wait.

As for the princess not seeing her parents so often: if I was the daughter of a deeply conservative father and unhappy with my traditional role as wife of the Crown Prince - would I want to have close contact with parents who probably support the system and not me? I don't think so. That's my interpretation but I simply don't believe the princess can't call people she wants to call - problem is: does she have friends she can rely on?

 

[bbb]

i think in their feeble old minds the evil IHA does still live in feudal Japan.

 

[Jo of Palatine]

Apparently some of them haven't got over the defeat in WW2 as well as most Germans.

Sorry? Could you please explain that? As you are one of the mods/admins I guess you didn't mean "as well as" as in "like most Germans" but as in "as sucessful as most Germans", but would be glad if you could make your meaning clearer . Thank you very much in advance, Jo the German.

 

[CrownPrinceLorenzo]

I wish Princess Takamatsu was still alive. She'd eat the IHA and these other politician for breakfast.

She was also the first member of the Imperial Family to support Aiko's succession to the throne. She also made references to Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria about the roles of female monarchs.

It was amazing too, because she was from the old days, yet she was very modern.

 

[betina]

I think that Her Impreial Highness Princess Aiko will make a great Empress of Japan.
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark was given the crown because her father His Royal Highness The late King Frederik IX had asked if the law could be changed to allow his daughter to assume the throne since he does not have any male heir to the Danish Throne.
I am sure that Her Imperial Highness Princess Aiko will be Empress of Japan in the future.

Actually this isnt true. Frederik respected his mother and brother so much so he didnt want the law to be changed. The reason why it was changed was that the women in Denmark got the right to vote in the early 1900´s and therefore people was thinking of that the kings children also should get equal right to inherit the throne. It didnt quite turn out that way because a boy still are getting before a girl in the danish succesion. (they are going to change this now)

 

[Amina]

The problem is they have no titles. They need the titles. 'Coz in Japan, the female MUST join the male's family.

So if the male is a commoner, she will become a commoner.

From what i've read on these forums they are thinking of changing that rule..

 

[Amina]

Ralph, did you read that article in Marengo's post? That suggested to me that it would be very unlikely that Aiko would become empress; I'm afraid that if she does, she'll be married off to some imperial descendent in order to produce a son from the imperial line, and as soon as he turns 18 there'll be pressure on her to do what her female predecessors did and abdicate in his favour.

I'm going to state the obvious but the main problem here is the IHA - those faceless men ruining the lives of most of the women in the Imperial household. Controlling every aspect it seems to me of what the members of that household do or say. VERY SINISTER.

Until the royal family are free of the IHA - these problems will continue.

 

[Amina]

I guess it all depends on the moment that the Crwon Prince becomes Emperor. I read the articles whose links were posted up-thread about the way the IHA works and it seemed to me that the emperor has quite the power within his family and the agency.

I don't believe for a moment that someone can stop the emperor from picking up a phone. Maybe it simply is not done and he uses other channels of communication like ordering a minion to do the call for him but I'm convinced if the emperor wants to contact somebody, he does.

As for the Imperial family - well, here I think the emperor is the one to set the rules. This emperor is obviously quite conservative and does not want his daughter-in-law to perform the public duties she would have been perfect for. He obviously believes that his family's obeisance is his due and that Masako did not fulfill her duties when her only child is a girl.

But - as soon as Naruhito becomes emperor, he is the one the IHA has to obey. He will be the one the government will consult. He can change things, I'm sure about it, it he has the character to do so. There are surely more modern men in the IHA who see a chance of a career on supporting the Crown Prince. There always are people like that.

My impression at the moment is that prince Naruhito bides his time and waits for the moment he will get the power. He dares openly protect his wife and daughter (and the rumours died down after that) but apart from that I think both Crown Prince and Princess know that they can't do anything without hurting too many people. So they simply wait.

Good observation - your comments have given me hope for an inventual change.

 

[Elspeth]

It seems that the Emperor has a lot of influence within the family, but from all that I've been reading, I'd say that the IHA controls the Emperor, not vice versa. The IHA are the ones holding the purse strings, and that has to count for something.

 

[Amina]

It seems that the Emperor has a lot of influence within the family, but from all that I've been reading, I'd say that the IHA controls the Emperor, not vice versa. The IHA are the ones holding the purse strings, and that has to count for something.

Of course i forgot about that the only way to change them would be if say when CP N becomes emperor he works with a sympathetic Prime Minister to change things & i don't see that happening because royals cannot get involved in politics. I don't know if there is anyway that say when he becomes emperor he could change the IHA.

 

[Toledo]

It seems that the Emperor has a lot of influence within the family, but from all that I've been reading, I'd say that the IHA controls the Emperor, not vice versa. The IHA are the ones holding the purse strings, and that has to count for something.

The Imperial Household brings memories of the people who controlled the last Emperor of China in the movie of the same name.
But I have some questions:
who really are these people?
how to they get that job?
Are they members of the old Nobility or it's a tradition passed within the family?

They seem to be the decision makers in Japan's Monarchy, and it seems they put as a lot of pressure against the Crown Princes and they daugther.

 

[CrownPrinceLorenzo]

They can go ahead and go against IHA's wishes. Nothing would happen to them. The late Princess Takamatsu did it all the time.

It's just that they're all just used to being obedient to the government agency. They need to get some courage.

 

[AnnieCat]

1 -- Did anyone notice that when Naruhito, Masako and Aiko went to see the Emperor and Empress they only stayed for 2 and a half hours? That's not really very long for a visit from an eldest son and a granddaughter -- unless you don't like having them around.

2 -- someone said Queen Beatrix invited the family. Maybe there's some protocol or rule that if a head of state invited them they HAD to go, it would give offense if they didn't. (Maybe that's exactly why Queen Beatrix did it, too.)

3 -- suppose Princess Kiko does have a baby boy. Who is he going to marry? By the time he's old enough to marry, in 25 years or so, women in Japan will be much more free even than they are now, and every single one of them will know what happened to Masako. Who's going to be willing to marry him? And what if his wife bears only girl children? Not that the IHA is going to listen to me or anything, but all they've really done is postpone the problem of the succession (the law of which was largely imposed by the Yankee occupation forces anyway!).

 

[Elspeth]

1 -- Did anyone notice that when Naruhito, Masako and Aiko went to see the Emperor and Empress they only stayed for 2 and a half hours? That's not really very long for a visit from an eldest son and a granddaughter -- unless you don't like having them around.

It's been reported - although with how much truth I'm not sure - that the Crown Princess doesn't get along with the Emperor and Empress.

2 -- someone said Queen Beatrix invited the family. Maybe there's some protocol or rule that if a head of state invited them they HAD to go, it would give offense if they didn't. (Maybe that's exactly why Queen Beatrix did it, too.)

Since this is a private visit, I doubt the IHA would have been forced to accept if they didn't want to. It's certainly polite to accept an invitation from a ruling monarch, but if the IHA had had a reason to still want to keep Masako in the country, no doubt they'd have politely refused, citing the Princess's health as the reason or something. However, with the heir about to be born, the Crown Prince and his family become far less important, and this is a good way for the IHA to send this message.

3 -- suppose Princess Kiko does have a baby boy. Who is he going to marry? By the time he's old enough to marry, in 25 years or so, women in Japan will be much more free even than they are now, and every single one of them will know what happened to Masako. Who's going to be willing to marry him? And what if his wife bears only girl children? Not that the IHA is going to listen to me or anything, but all they've really done is postpone the problem of the succession (the law of which was largely imposed by the Yankee occupation forces anyway!).

There'll always be someone who's ready to marry a prince. Kiko didn't do too badly out of it, after all. There's probably be some pressure put on the prince to marry at a younger age than Naruhito did; maybe this one will go to Gakushuin University rather than the University of Tokyo, where there may be more "suitable" candidates like Kiko. As for the question of bearing females - the reason we're so convinced that this is a boy is that there are ways of making sure of it, both before and after the pregnancy begins. If there are ways of ensuring males now, in 25 years time it'll doubtless be a great deal easier again. This may be the last generation where the gender is left to chance.

 

[AnnieCat]

Sure, Kiko didn't do too badly out of it -- but she married the younger son, and even at the time she married that younger son there were some comments about how he had an easier time finding someone to marry because he was the younger son, presumably not in line for the throne, so his wife would have an easier time of it than the girl who married the Crown Prince. And that was what, 15 years or so ago? For Kiko's son, we're talking 20 years from now at least.

I seem to recall reading that even Prince Charles, in the 1970s, was turned down by a young woman who did not want to live the way she'd have to live if she married him, she wanted her regular life. IIRC it was Lady Jane Wellesley. And that's in the British royal family, which is nowhere near as hidebound as the Japanese one.

of course there's no way to really know what will happen 20 years from now.

 

[Charlotte1]

it would also give the evil IHA a scare, can you imagine how they would feel about a room full of women so much smarter than them. i think that's why they hate her, their "manhood" is threatened by masako she sees right though them. .

Please enough with the 'evil IHA', it's a huge bureacratic organisation with over 7,000 employees. Everyone who works for the Imperial Family is IHA. That includes the farmers who milk the cows on the Imperial Farm, are they too 'evil'? They're IHA. The gardeners that clip the bonsai in the Imperial gardens are IHA, are they 'evil'? The cleaners who maintain the palaces are IHA are they 'evil'?
There's no threatening of 'manhood', in the last 10 years more women have been employed in the IHA than men. So is their 'womanhood' also being threatened because they want a male heir.
Wanting a male heir has nothing to do with whether women are equal to men, or who is smarter, it's all to do with tradition, which is an incredibly important aspect of Japanese culture. The desire to preserve tradition is even stronger. There are religious practises to consider as the Emperor also conducts certain Shinto rites, they can only be done by a male. Shinto priests are only male ( like catholic priests).
The top echelons of the IHA were only doing their job, to preserve the tradition of the Japanese monarchial system. It's an extremely conservative system in a conservative society.
As westerners we may not understand and not agree with the system but that doesn't mean the people perpetuating a system we don't understand are 'evil'.

 

[Next Star]

I feel that The Japan Imperial Family should allow female heirs some do not know but it has been more than 40 years since a male heir has been born. How one Japanese princess is pregnant but I forget her name the imperial family better hope and pray that she is carrying a male heir or the will have to change the constitution to allow females to be heirs to the throne.

 

[Princess Robijn]

1 -- Did anyone notice that when Naruhito, Masako and Aiko went to see the Emperor and Empress they only stayed for 2 and a half hours? That's not really very long for a visit from an eldest son and a granddaughter -- unless you don't like having them around.

2 -- someone said Queen Beatrix invited the family. Maybe there's some protocol or rule that if a head of state invited them they HAD to go, it would give offense if they didn't. (Maybe that's exactly why Queen Beatrix did it, too.)

3 -- suppose Princess Kiko does have a baby boy. Who is he going to marry? By the time he's old enough to marry, in 25 years or so, women in Japan will be much more free even than they are now, and every single one of them will know what happened to Masako. Who's going to be willing to marry him? And what if his wife bears only girl children? Not that the IHA is going to listen to me or anything, but all they've really done is postpone the problem of the succession (the law of which was largely imposed by the Yankee occupation forces anyway!).

Maybe if the Crown Prince becomes Emporer, things may be different for little Princess Aiko, maybe in 20 years (or more) the law changes...

 

[galuhcandrakirana]

They can go ahead and go against IHA's wishes. Nothing would happen to them. The late Princess Takamatsu did it all the time.

.Wow I didn't know that IH had a rebel princess, btw what the IH did to her while she showed her rebellious?.

It's just that they're all just used to being obedient to the government agency. They need to get some courage

I agree. May be they have to change bit of the attitude .

I bring here the quote from other thread because I think this thread is the right place to reply it.

(The same opinion polls that favoured female sucession, after Kiko's pregnancy was made public came back and showed that, yes female sucession was OK if there was no other choice. Chance of a boy, leave them as they are)

Then Japanese people themselves don't seem to be ready for an equal opportunity between male and female to ascend the throne. I think if people are unite in pushing for the change then IH or government can not do much except follow/approve what (the majority) of people want. But if people still don't want to let female become monarch while she has male sibling then we will never see the equal opportunity happen .

 

[Zonk]

I disagree. I think the Japanese people (from what I read) will accept a female on the throne but only if there is no other option. It will be interesting to see what Kiko has and the ripple affect.

 

[Elspeth]

Please enough with the 'evil IHA', it's a huge bureacratic organisation with over 7,000 employees. Everyone who works for the Imperial Family is IHA. That includes the farmers who milk the cows on the Imperial Farm, are they too 'evil'? They're IHA. The gardeners that clip the bonsai in the Imperial gardens are IHA, are they 'evil'? The cleaners who maintain the palaces are IHA are they 'evil'?

Obviously bbb wasn't talking about every last employee of the IHA. I think we're all aware that farm hands aren't in the business of telling Princess Masako that she may not travel out of the country or that her conversation with foreign leaders should be restricted to sweet smiles. I don't suppose bbb thinks for a minute that that the bonsai clippers are the ones who Prince Naruhito criticised in public for stifling his wife's personality and career. I'm not sure why all of a sudden we're arguing over semantics when people have been using "the IHA" throughout these threads to mean the high-level civil servants who have been instrumental in making Princess Masako so miserable and ill, but I see no reason to believe that bbb was meaning anything different from anyone else by the use of the term "IHA" without qualifiers as to exactly which subset of the IHA she was talking about.

 

[Elspeth]

I feel that The Japan Imperial Family should allow female heirs some do not know but it has been more than 40 years since a male heir has been born.

The last male to be born into the Imperial family is the Emperor's younger son, Prince Akishino (Prince Fumihito, as he was then), in 1965, as has been mentioned quite often in the threads in this forum, so I doubt that people here don't know. Thank you for repeating the information, though.

How one Japanese princess is pregnant but I forget her name

That would be Kiko, the wife of the above-mentioned Prince Akishino.

the imperial family better hope and pray that she is carrying a male heir or the will have to change the constitution to allow females to be heirs to the throne.

This situation has been discussed quite extensively in other threads in this forum, such as here and here. As you can see, many of us are fairly sure they're doing quite a bit more than just hoping.

 

[Next Star]

Once again I did not know that the other members knew about there not being a male heir to the imperial family in many years.

 

[TheQueen]

This has been talked about extensively in newspapers/magazines for quite a few years. That is why there has been so much pressure put onto Crown Princess Masako for the past few years to produce a male heir.

 

[Charlotte1]

Obviously bbb wasn't talking about every last employee of the IHA. I think we're all aware that farm hands aren't in the business of telling Princess Masako that she may not travel out of the country or that her conversation with foreign leaders should be restricted to sweet smiles. I don't suppose bbb thinks for a minute that that the bonsai clippers are the ones who Prince Naruhito criticised in public for stifling his wife's personality and career. I'm not sure why all of a sudden we're arguing over semantics when people have been using "the IHA" throughout these threads to mean the high-level civil servants who have been instrumental in making Princess Masako so miserable and ill, but I see no reason to believe that bbb was meaning anything different from anyone else by the use of the term "IHA" without qualifiers as to exactly which subset of the IHA she was talking about.

Well to be pedantic, the gardener in the Imperial gardens IS IHA. My original post was in irritation of the lack of understanding about Japanese cultural norms as well the simplistic condemnation of that “evil IHA”.
Yes the Chief Steward of the IHA a few years back did say that they had deliberately not planned overseas trips for Masako, but it was in the hope that she would fall pregnant quickly and basically fulfil the role of any crown princess which is to provide an heir. It wasn’t a decision based on cruelty or ‘evilness’ and it was very much in line with Japanese cultural norms. Even in this day and age the majority of women in Japan as soon as they get married stop work and stay at home in the hope of getting pregnant. One of my Japanese friends worked secretly so her parents and parents-in-law didn’t know that she was working after she got married. ( Her husband had no problem with her working, as their parents lived in different city, it was possible for her to work and they not know) The expectation was that now she was married she should stay home and provide them with grand-children and never darken the door of an employer’s office again.
The courtier that told Masako that she should ‘smile sweetly’ was again doing nothing more than exhibiting a cultural norm. Walk into any bank in Japan and you’ll see a row of tellers who are all women, their job is to smile nicely ( regardless of the fact that they’re all university graduates) find out what the customer wants and then pass the paperwork to a male bank employee who sits in a desk behind the tellers and actually puts the transaction through, and then hands the paperwork back to the female teller to pass onto the customer. Japan is a country where female office staff are known as “office flowers” they’re there to brighten up the place. A Japanese acquaintance of mine asked me to read over her resume and application letter as she was a flight attendant and was applying to a foreign international airlines. She wanted me to check the English translation of her Japanese resume and letter. My eyes opened in horror when in her application letter I read “I have a special smile, let me shown you my special smile’ in the part where she was requesting an interview. As much as I tried to point out how inappropriate this was to a foreign employer, she insisted that it remained in, after all it got her the job in a Japanese domestic airlines. ( She didn’t get the interview!)
As much as to westerner post-feminist movement females this all sounds awful that is the cultural norm still in Japan. ( Although many women are rebelling to a certain extent by refusing to get married or having a career first and then marrying late, which is playing havoc with the Japanese birthrate)
The courtiers of the IHA aren’t doing anything bad or evil according to Japanese standards which is why there is no movement to change the IHA or no condemnation of it in the Japanese media.
Now as a western woman I’d be the first to admit I found it very difficult being female in Japan and I worked for an American firm! And initially only mixed with expats, but I speak Japanese and had a Japanese female friendship group who basically educated me on the realities of being female in Japan. I feel for Masako as I know the days when the injustices to females in Japan would get to me I could retreat to the haven of just being around expats and eventually I left the country all together. (Not because of the inequality of the sexes!)Masako doesn’t have that option, but she’s not the victim of deliberate cruelty or evilness from the employees of the IHA, just a victim of the extremely conservative attitudes to the role of a woman in a conservative institution that is the Imperial Family.

 

[Charlotte1]

.Wow I didn't know that IH had a rebel princess, btw what the IH did to her while she showed her rebellious?.
.

Princess Takamatsu came out publically and stated that she thought Japan should have a female emperor. She stated that in the past Japan had, had female emperors. ( Which is true but they only held the role temporarily until a male sucessor could take over the throne)

Princess Takamatsu was quite elderly and died (2?) years ago. She was the Masako of her generation. In the early 1920's she was sent to the United States and was educated there, much to her displeasure, she was called back to Japan as a marriage had been arranged between her and Emperor Hirohito's youngest brother Prince Takamatsu.( She was the daughter of a Samurai noble so a prime candidate for marriage into the Imperial Family) She didn't want to go back to the rigidity of the Japanese court. But luckily for her Prince Takamatsu was also quite liberal minded and intelligent, both loved jazz music and as both were fluent in English they were sent abroad on various goodwill missions. (There are photos of them the the Japan thread.) The Takamatsu's didn't have children which was not a problem as he was the youngest brother of 4 brothers.

 

[Elspeth]

Considering the effect this treatment had on her, and considering that the people concerned presumably were aware of what was happening to her and continued to try to force her into the mould of the "ideal" princess regardless and were left with a mentally damaged person as a result, and considering that this is the second time in two generations it's happened, a case could be made for the notion that cruelty was involved at some level, even if it was the cruelty of not seeing the individual behind the position she was occupying.

I haven't visited Japan but my husband has worked there and some of his Japanese friends have visited us; from my husband's accounts of the way female scientists are treated, and from the way his friends reacted to the fact that I'm quite outspoken in public, it's clear that the cultural norms are quite different. However, the powers that be in the imperial family and the IHA should have known what they were dealing with. This was not a second Kiko Kawashima, who'd known her prince at university and was expecting to get married soon after completing her education at Gakushuin University; this was a woman nearing 30 years old, who'd received most of her tertiary education in the west and had a career, and who apparently had serious reservations about marrying into the whole imperial setup. For them to try to insist on cramming her into the mould of ideal Japanese little female was a disaster waiting to happen, and the experience with Princess Michiko should have given them pause if nothing else. And if someone wants to characterise that treatment as cruelty, I don't see a problem, to be honest, especially considering the outcome.

 

[ropura]

May I correctly:
Prince Takamatsu is not the youngest brother,he is the third brother of Emperor Hirohito.
Emperor Hirohito youngest brother is Prince Mikasa,he still a live is and celebrating this year his 90 year birthday.
They call Prince Mikasa the ("' Red Prince"') because he was not agree with his brother Emperor Hirohito at "Second World War II".

ropura