TOKYO — It has been nearly 250 years since a woman last held the title to Japan ’s Chrysanthemum Throne, and almost that long since an emperor abdicated the position.
Now, as Japan moves to accommodate Emperor Akihito ’s desire to give up the throne before he dies, many Japanese believe it is also time to clear the way for a woman to reign again someday.
In August, Emperor Akihito, 83, signaled that he wanted to step down, telling the nation that he worried he would not be able to fulfill his duties much longer. The Imperial Household Law, which governs the succession of emperors in the world’s oldest monarchy, makes no provision for abdication. But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ’s governing party indicated this month that it would consider one-time legislation to let the emperor give up the throne.
Polls show that a vast majority of the Japanese public believes the law should be permanently overhauled, not just superseded once. What’s more, the bulk of respondents said that the law, which has been in place since 1947, should also be changed to admit women as rightful heirs to the throne.
People close to the emperor, a beloved figure in Japan, say that even he agrees.
“If you look at his video message and read it deeply, he wants to reform the Imperial Household Law,” said Mototsugu Akashi, a friend of Emperor Akihito’s since childhood, who spoke to him by telephone last summer. “I don’t think he sticks to the narrow idea that only a male on the throne is acceptable.”
This month, when a government-appointed panel tacitly recommended special legislation that would allow only Emperor Akihito to abdicate, it made no mention of the possibility of admitting women as heirs to the throne. Mr. Abe, a conservative, has not explicitly spoken on the subject, either.
The issue remains contentious among conservative supporters of Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, who fear that opening the Imperial Household Law to more permanent change would force a debate on female succession. They consider the male line of succession to be sacrosanct, and derailed a plan by a previous prime minister , Junichiro Koizumi, to revise the Imperial Household Law to allow a woman to hold the throne.
“The Japanese imperial system’s value does not lie in the blood of the current incumbent of the emperor’s throne, but the value is put in the blood that exists in a long lineage,” said Hidetsugu Yagi, professor of constitutional law at Reitaku University. “Repeating this male lineage is the value of the Japanese imperial system.”
If the current emperor is allowed to abdicate, he will be succeeded by his eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, 56. If the Imperial Household Law changes to allow female successors, next in line would be the crown prince’s only child, Princess Aiko, 15. Under current law, his successor would be his nephew, Prince Hisahito, 10, the only boy of his generation in the imperial family.
With so few male descendants left in the line of succession, Mr. Abe suggested this past week that other branches of the former imperial family could be accorded a status that would allow men in their lines to ascend to the throne. The largest opposition party, the Democratic Party, has proposed changing the law to allow women to reign.
Until the 20th century, emperors kept concubines in order to ensure the birth of male heirs. No one has proposed reviving that practice.
Japan is one of the few monarchies that do not allow women to reign. According to Naotaka Kimizuka, professor of European history and politics at Kanto Gakuin University, successors to the throne in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Spain are all young women.
While the Japanese stipulation that the throne must pass through the male line dates back to the Meiji era in the 19th century, historians trace the dawn of the imperial system to the fourth or fifth century, although Japanese myth traces the emperor’s lineage back 2,700 years. In the 125 generations that have been recorded since, eight women were allowed to rule as empresses when no adult men were eligible at the time.
Age or marital status ensured that these empresses did not bear children who would be fathered by men outside the imperial line, and they effectively served as placeholders until a man with a patrilineal claim came of age. The last empress, Gosakuramachi, reigned from 1762 to 1770 before her nephew succeeded her.
Isao Tokoro, professor emeritus of legal history at Kyoto Sangyo University and an expert on the history of the imperial family, said that in the seventh and eighth centuries, Japanese law actually allowed women to reign as empresses. But that changed when Japan imported some tenets of government from China, adopting the concept of a male-only lineage for emperors. Even Japanese myth points to a female origin story for the imperial line: The first emperor, Jimmu, is said to have descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu 2,700 years ago.
“Japan will be laughed at in the world if we keep saying” only men can inherit the throne, Mr. Tokoro said.
In the modern era, the pressure to bear a son drove the current crown prince’s wife, Masako, a Harvard-educated former diplomat, into a deep depression.
Her daughter, Princess Aiko, who loves animals and is a big fan of sumo wrestling, has also succumbed to the pressure of royal life. She was absent from school for nearly two months last fall. According to a report in Josei Seven, a weekly magazine, a person related to the imperial household described Princess Aiko as being “shocked with the intense attention she received as an imperial family member.”
Observers of the royal family point out that whoever eventually marries Prince Hisahito will also be under great scrutiny.
“That little boy’s wife is going to have the same kind of pressure that Masako had,” said Mihoko Suzuki, director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Miami, who has written about women in European monarchies. “It’s going to ruin her life. It’s about this unthinking following of rules or tradition.”
Dr. Suzuki noted that in Europe, female monarchs had helped redefine the range of possibilities for women. In England, for example, Elizabeth I “was not interested in women’s rights,” Dr. Suzuki said. “But what’s interesting is that women at the time and after her looked to her as somebody who actually affirmed what women can do.”
Young women in Japan say that not allowing women to assume the imperial throne is just another form of discrimination and that it stems from the same patriarchal impulse that requires married couples to use one surname — which usually results in the woman taking her husband’s last name.
“I work every day, and face the male-centered system,” said Kanako Yoshida, 27, a computer programmer in the Kanagawa prefecture.
“There are very few women in management, and changes take place very slowly,” she said. “Like Queen Elizabeth in England, if Princess Aiko becomes the emperor, things may change in society.”

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