Japanese emperor’s wish to abdicate opens ‘can of worms’

[chahlley]

(World Today Tuesday 9 August 2016)

Parliament would have to change law

Japanese emperor’s wish to abdicate opens ‘can of worms’

Emperor Akihito maintains an often punishing schedule,

despite treatment for prostate cancer in 2003 and heart surgery in 2012. Photo: Reuters

TOKYO — It has been something of an open secret in Japan that Emperor Akihito would like a privilege most people take for granted: At 82, he wants to retire. The question is whether the Japanese and their elected leaders will let him.

In an extraordinary televised  address yesterday, the popular  emperor spoke publicly about the issue for the first time. Though his words were characteristically vague — he discussed his age, his rigorous daily schedule and what he called his increasing physical limitations — the message was unmistakable.

“I am concerned that it will become more and more difficult for me to fulfil my duties as a symbolic emperor,” he said in a prerecorded address that lasted about 10 minutes and was broadcast on multiple Japanese television networks.

If Emperor Akihito steps down, the move could redefine Japan’s royal family, the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy. While the emperor now has only symbolic power, an abdication could also resurrect a contentious  issue in Japan: The debate over allowing a woman to occupy the throne.

First reported in banner headlines by the Japanese news media in July, Emperor Akihito, who has been treated for cancer and heart problems, was said to want to retire and pass the title to his son Crown Prince Naruhito, 56. Prince Naruhito appears to share his father’s quiet temperament and wish to keep the monarchy apolitical.

But abdication is complicated  because of Japanese law, which says an emperor serves until death. Parliament would have to change the law for Emperor Akihito to step down.

In a short response, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suggested that his government was open to changing the law, though he stopped short of making a specific commitment to do so.

“Considering His Majesty’s age, the burden of his official duties and his anxieties, we must think carefully about what can be done,” he said yesterday.

Japanese emperors define eras in the country. Its unique calendar is based on their reigns: 2016 is  expressed as Emperor Akihito’s 28th year on the throne, and when his  successor takes over, the date will reset to Year One.

Emperor Akihito’s father, Hirohito, died in 1989 — Year 64 of his reign — as both the Cold War and Japan’s economic boom years were drawing to a close, intensifying the sense of a historical shift.

There is no legal provision for  abdication from the Chrysanthemum Throne, held by the emperor’s family for almost 2,700 years, according to the official genealogy, which stretches back to mythical times.

Emperor Akihito effectively asked Parliament to change the rules, though experts say he could only do so in the most indirect words. That is to avoid seeming to meddle in politics, which has been forbidden to Japan’s emperors since the country’s defeat in World War II, waged in Hirohito’s name.

After the war, Emperor Akihito’s father stunned his subjects by declaring that he was not a god, overturning decades of government propaganda and centuries of loosely held tradition. A new Constitution, imposed by the victorious United States, stripped him of political power and relegated the monarchy to a purely ceremonial role.

If Parliament granted Emperor Akihito’s wish to abdicate, it would be the biggest transformation of the Japanese monarchy since the war.

“Historically, it was extremely common for emperors to abdicate,” said Mr Takeshi Hara, an authority on the imperial family at the Open University of Japan. More than half of Japan’s monarchs have vacated the throne, often for quiet retirement at Buddhist monasteries. Only in the 19th century, when Japan’s leaders created the cult of emperor worship, did quitting become impossible.

Emperor Akihito maintains an  often punishing schedule, despite treatment for prostate cancer in 2003 and heart surgery in 2012. He and his wife, Empress Michiko — the first commoner to marry into the imperial family — have become consolers-inchief for victims of natural disasters, such as the earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan in 2011.

In recent years, some have come to see Emperor Akihito as a quiet but powerful guardian of Japan’s postwar pacifist identity, even as Japan’s conservative government has sought to loosen decades-old legal restrictions on the military.

Opinion surveys conducted by the Japanese news media suggest that the public supports Emperor Akihito’s wish to abdicate. As many as 85 per cent of respondents, depending on the survey, say they favour amending the Imperial Household Law to allow it.

While Mr Abe would be hardpressed to deny him, an amendment process could prove awkward for Mr Abe’s government.

“This opens other cans of worms,” said Professor Kenneth Ruoff, the director of the Centre for Japanese Studies at Portland State University and the author of The People’s Emperor, a history of the postwar Japanese monarchy.

Many see the Imperial Household Law as outdated in other ways, particularly regarding gender. The law says only men can inherit the throne, a provision that is increasingly in dispute. A decade ago, during a  debate about whether the law should be changed to open the way for female monarchs, conservatives in Mr Abe’s right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party were firmly opposed.

Today, Mr Abe’s government has embraced the rhetoric of female  empowerment in other areas, such as the workplace, but few think it is ready to extend the idea to the monarchy.

Prince Naruhito is the elder of the imperial couple’s two sons. “He represents continuity,” said Prof Ruoff.

One issue, whatever the timing of the succession, will be the public role of Prince Naruhito’s wife, Princess Masako, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated former diplomat who has chronic depression, which has kept her  secluded for much of the past 15 years.

In 2004, Prince Naruhito appeared to blame the strictures of imperial life for Princess Masako’s illness, saying unnamed antagonists had sought to “deny Masako’s career and personality”. How the experience might inspire him, as emperor, to try to change the highly insular monarchy is unclear.

Prof Ruoff said Emperor Akihito’s biggest achievement had been to  focus attention on social welfare causes. When Japan hosted the Summer Olympics in 1964, Emperor Akihito  became the patron of the then-obscure Paralympics. At the time, people with disabilities were often shunned and stigmatised in Japan.

“Akihito and Michiko have spent a tremendous amount of time leveraging their prestige on behalf of the least privileged members of Japanese society,” said Prof Ruoff. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are the conscience of the nation, but they do draw attention to these issues.” THE NEW YORK TIMES

Historically, it was extremely common for emperors to abdicate. (Only in the 19th century ... did quitting become impossible.) Mr Takeshi Hara an authority on the imperial family at the open university of Japan.