Princess Mako, Emperor Akihito’s grandchild, is getting married, and, by law, leaving the royal family. Her departure is highlighting a looming succession crisis.
TOKYO — A royal engagement typically unleashes breathless headlines and frenzied efforts by the press to learn of the wedding details. All that is happening in Japan, where Princess Mako, the eldest grandchild of Emperor Akihito, will soon be engaged to her college boyfriend.
But news of the impending engagement, which broke Tuesday night, is also raising fresh questions about the status of women in the imperial family.
Under the Imperial Household Law, which governs the succession of emperors in Japan’s monarchy, the world’s oldest, women are not allowed to reign on the throne. And women born into the royal family must officially leave it once they marry.
So when the princess, a 25-year-old doctoral student at International Christian University in Tokyo, marries Kei Komuro, 25, an aspiring lawyer, she will become a commoner, narrowing the prospective pool of heirs to the throne.
As Japan considers whether to reform the imperial law to accommodate the current emperor’s request to abdicate before he dies, many Japanese have suggested it is time to revise the 70-year-old law to allow women to ascend to the throne and to allow royal daughters to bear heirs.
With so few males left in the imperial family — there are only five, including the current emperor — Japan’s monarchy is facing a looming succession crisis.
The public overwhelmingly supports changing the law not only to allow the emperor to give up the throne, but to allow female successors. In a poll by Kyodo News this month, 86 percent of those surveyed said they were in favor of allowing a female to reign. And close to two-thirds said that sons — or daughters — born of royal women should also be allowed to ascend to the throne.
Under the current law, even if the princess, the eldest daughter of Prince Akishino, the younger brother of Crown Prince Naruhito, were allowed to remain within the imperial family after she marries, her children — even any sons — would not be in line to the throne.
