Royal Abdication
The week of April 29th to Mary 3rd was a big week for Japan. It is the annual spring time Golden Week holiday. Golden Week is not actually one holiday, it’s a cluster of four or five solid days, ending in Children’s Day on May 5th, the day that families fly carp streamers to celebrate their sons. (I Japanese it’s called “Child Day,” “kodo no hi,” but in English it’s pluralized to “Children’s Day.” I don’t know why, except that maybe it just sounds more democratic.) Because May 5th is a Sunday this year, Monday, May 6th is a spill-over holiday in lieu of the Sunday. But this week is special because of the abdication of Emperor Akihito and the accession of his son, Naruhito, Golden Week has been expanded to ten full days of spring holiday to help people celebrate. Personally, it’s not such a great thing for me because it means ten days of unemployment. The Japanese government probably envisioned millions of people travelling during the holiday, spending money to boost the economy. But as for me, I’m just sitting around my apartment every day, eating, reading, washing laundry, watching Youtube and movies on DVD, waiting for work to start next Tuesday, May 7th.
The weather is not really good this week. Variously cool, mild and warm with overcast skies and periodic rain. I have to be careful not to catch a cold.
Abdication is unprecedented in Japanese history. This is the first imperial abdication in a couple centuries, so there was no law to allow for it or ritual to facilitate it. In August 2016 Akihito did an end-run around the government by making a recorded television address to the nation to try to get the population on his side, asking permission to retire, assuring everyone that he was in good health and that there was no emergency, but that he worried about the effects of age on his ability to perform his duties. It worked. What with other things going on it took the government of Prime Minister Abe a couple of years to pass a law allowing for abdication (a one-time only law, because the government doesn’t want to make this sort of thing easy or normal), and then to schedule it somewhere in the busy calendar. The abdication had to be squeezed in somewhere among elections, Olympics, festivals, summits, and foreign heads of state visits.
Akihito abdicated on Tuesday, April 30th in a ceremony at the Imperial Palace downtown largely broadcast on live TV. I didn’t see it because my family was watching the Twin Peaks TV show on rental DVD. I don’t like Twin Peaks. It’s too stupidly odd for me. Naruhito became Emperor at midnight on Tuesday, April 30th. The accession ceremony was held on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 1st at the Imperial Palace. I watched it on Youtube. It took all of 15-minutes, simple and beautiful. Naruhito and his wife, Masako, walked into a large meeting room, accompanied by his extended family. His father, Akihito, wasn’t there, but his uncle, Akihito’s surviving brother and the only other surviving child of Emperor Hirohito, Prince Hitachi (83), was there in a wheelchair. Naruhito and Masako stood on a raised dais and he read a 1-minute speech promising to honour his father’s legacy, abide by the constitution, and work hard to fulfill his role as “symbol of the nation and the unity of the people.” The Cabinet was standing in front of the dais. PM Abe stepped forward and read a short speech promising loyalty and good government, and that was all. The imperial family filed out of the room and it was done.
Emperor Akihito now takes on the title “Emperor emeritus” and he immediately and completely disappeared from public view, so as not to interfere with his successor, or confuse the public. The new Crown Prince is Naruhito’s younger brother, Akishino (53). Japan’s imperial succession law permits only male primogeniture. Emperor Naruhito and Masako have one daughter, Aiko, who is ineligible to succeed her father and ascend the thrown because she’s female. (Aiko is a high school student now.) The Imperial family is dwindling. The law here provides only for succession through the male bloodline, and currently it has a shortage of males. There are only three heirs to the Chrysanthemum throne: Naurhito (59), his younger brother Akishino, and Akishino’s son Hisahito (12). Today thee are 18 Imperial family members, 13 of whom are female. 12-years ago the government came very close to amending the law to allow for female succession. But then the Emperor’s younger brother and his wife - who already had two teenage daughters - surprised the nation with Hisahito, the first male born into the Imperial family in 41 years. The timing of that pregnancy is suspicious, like they were goaded into it by government conservatives in order to produce a male heir and block the necessity of amending the law and facing an eventual empress. With the birth of Hisahito, who just started junior high school in April 2019, they got their wish. Or, a temporary stay, anyway. When Naruhito dies, the imperial succession will shift slightly.
Incidentally, when Imperial family females marry, they lose their royal status and become ordinary citizens. Japan has no aristocracy, so the royal family always marries “commoners.” The media always makes a big deal about this. “Princess Sachiko engaged to a commoner!” without ever remarking that that state of affairs is unavoidable due to the lack of an aristocracy. Idiots! One possible solution, apart from allowing direct female succession, might be to allow the Imperial family to be enlarged by allowing females to remain royal after marriage, and to establish their own branches.
Even without amending the Imperial succession law, the government is still faced with the necessity of redistributing royal duties (touring, greeting, speaking, presenting awards) and allowing the princesses to take a more active role than they ever have before. Greater female participation can help attract public interest through their exposure to the media and help keep the Imperial household relevant in a modern society. The princesses could also bring their professional experiences and their international educations to bear on royal duties. If something is not done then the Imperial family might soon (within a generation) face a crisis of extinction. The fact that the Imperial Household Agency (a Cabinet level office that administers all things royal) is so slow on the matter is a measure of how male-centred Japanese society still is.
In English we always call the emperor by name: Emperor Hirohito, Emperor Akihito, Emperor Naruhito, etc. In Japanese, the emperor is simply called “tenno,” or “Majesty.” Japanese usually do not know the emperor’s actual name. When they die, emperors are known posthumously by their Era name, or “gengo.” So, Emperor Hirohito (a war criminal) is known as Emperor Showa, because his Era was called the Showa Era. When Akihito dies, he will be known as Emperor Heisei, after the Heisei Era of his reign. Until now, my like in Japan has been almost perfectly synonymous with the Heisei Era. The new era of Emperor Naruhito is called the Reiwa Era, “reiwa no jidai.” The name was announced by the government a few weeks ago. They went to a lot of trouble to think up a good name, and both the name and the kanji spelling of it were unveiled with great ceremony. There is a fair deal of excitement here about the start of a new era.
There is some debate here about the continued use of the gengo system of Imperial Era. The objection is that the Western system of counting years is more universal and easier. I was born in 1962, which was Showa 37, the 37th year of the reign of Emperor Hirohito. “Wareki” is the Japanese system of Imperial Era counting. The Western Common Era system of counting years is called “seireki.” On official documents people here have a choice of writing their birthday is the wareki system or the seireki system. Sometimes I use one, sometimes the other. It surprised Japanese that I even know the difference between wareki and seireki when I proudly tell them I was born in Showa 37. Currently in Japan, there are come centenarians whose birthdays goes way back to the Meiji Era (1967-1912). It’s odd to see someone’s birthday reported, for example, as “Meiji 46” (1912), but it does happen. There are many centenarians and super-centenarians in Japan.
Now Naruhito is the new Emperor. I believe an official coronation ceremony is scheduled for this Autumn, to which heads of state will be invited, and maybe there will be another special holiday. I remember when Naruhito, as Crown Prince, married English-speaking, Harvard-educated Masako Owada in June 1993. There was a special holiday for that, and commemorative coins. I also sadly remember it as the first time one of my students died - a 13 year Grade 7 boy who, I was told, died in a car crash when riding with his family. That story might be truth or fiction, but it remains true that I lost a boy that week.