Abdication, Succession and Japan’s Imperial Future: An Emperor’s Dilemma | Hacker News Reader

Abdication, Succession and Japan’s Imperial Future: An Emperor’s Dilemma

apjjf.org

54 pointssignor_bosco37 comments

> There is, after all, ample precedent for this: women have succeeded to the throne on ten previous occasions

> [When this comes to pass,] the emperor system, which depends on an unbroken line of male heirs, will collapse.

These two statements seem to be in conflict.

Not exactly; notice the following passage:

> What is striking is that 74% have no objection to the offspring of a woman emperor succeeding to the throne. If this were to happen, it would be an historical first.

Women have succeeded to the throne, but they have been succeeded in turn by offspring of an earlier male emperor. Every emperor (in theory) has been able to trace their ancestry back to the sun goddess through the paternal line.

Tracing ancestry through the maternal line as well would be a significant change.

> sun goddess

> paternal line

Hmmm.

I mean, I guess it depends whether you count her sons as the first generation or not, but still, why would deity-ness (is there a better word for this? Deism?) pass from her to her sons and thence only to their sons?

Divinity. And because, well, that’s how it works. That’s the very nature of tradition, especially religious tradition; it is because it is.

I mean, the real answer is probably that the rules were developed in the context of a patriarchal culture. But they're hardly alone; many countries have historically practiced agnatic primogeniture which works quite similarly.

Per wikipedia it's a patrilineal system, where women are eligible to succeed to the throne but their children aren't. So there have been empresses, but the imperial line itself is still (ostensibly) an unbroken series of male heirs.

> On some occasions [of a reigning empress], the direct male heir was only a toddler and unable to perform the imperial rituals. In such an instance, his mother, aunt or elder sister, if also of Imperial lineage through her patriline, temporarily took over the throne until the child came to puberty, which was deemed sufficient for a boy's accession. An empress' offspring also did not have claim to the throne from the said maternal lineage, so assigning a female to the throne had the convenient effect of postponing succession disputes.

Notably there have only been two reigning empresses since the 8th Century and none at all in the modern era. The current Imperial Household Law only allows males to ascend the throne, so they were in real trouble 10 or 15 years back before the birth of the current Emperor's nephew who is now 2nd in line to the throne. The succession is not fixed by the constitution, so they could change the law any time they like. But they probably won't unless they have to.

If they really want a male descendant, there are other branches of descendants of previous emperors. But after WWII the Japanese royal family was restricted to the main branch and the cadet branches became commoners.

I just love the legalese idealization, on "how the emperor is challenging the law" I mean, 'legal scholars' taking themselves too serious for a change...

The rest of the text just reads like legal sadism against a person who apparently is all powerful but shouldn't do anything

its 2019 and people in developed countries still care about (and support with their taxes) kings, queens, emperors and such?!

You would be shocked to learn how much people willingly donate to churches, temples, cults, and other strictly irrational enterprises.

Kings and emperors are a very inexpensive symbolic flourish on top of that — and many of them do a reasonable job of unifying a nation.

I think you mean “partly” rather than “strictly.” Even if you remove the supernatural element (the part that calls for faith, which is not rational), you’re still left with a political, philosophical, and moral framework. Such frameworks aren’t irrational any more than say “social democracy” as a political framework is irrational. The you have the utilitarian social functions. Serving as places for members of the community to interact, a place for children to be socialized, a place to help elderly people stay connected, a vehicle for addressing local social issues.

A political or philosophical framework needs not be rational to be efficient and useful.

The very idea of love (especially as in 2Cor13) is quite irrational, still it worked, and moved a lot of people over millennia.

I'd rather have a city full of churches/mosques/temples, which are at least generally interesting public use buildings, than a skyline dominated by glass towers occupied by banks, insurance and consulting companies.

And anyway at least as far as the Catholic church is concerned, most money ends up in social causes.

I wonder, of civilizations that have lasted the longest, which ones had kings, queens, emperors and such versus the opposite?

I think you are confusing correlation with causation there

That's not an argument that something is good. Civilizations willing to perpetuate genocide tend to survive longer and achieve more economic success than those unwilling to, for instance (they face fewer external threats).

To be clear I disagree with the person you're responding to - I just think we should be careful about counterarguments with significant collateral moral damage.

You’ve taken my response to another degree, but I wholeheartedly do not disagree with you. In fact I admire it. I think you want to remind us that we as humans are horrible when given power, irrespective of title.

The Republic of Venice was a rare exception in a world of kings/queens/emperors - and also exceptionally stable, prosperous, and quite possibly (depending on how one regards the Meiji Restoration, to return to topic) the long-lasting nation state in history.

People see the royal family as both a living link to their past and a unifying force for the nation that is above mere politics.

Add to this the fact that the Japanese royal line is by far the oldest in the world and that the Emperor is also the head of the Shinto religion.

It's 2019 and people still like to mock cultures and traditions blindly. The article does a pretty good job of explaining a lot of the situation in a grounded, rational way -- especially concerns over the uses and potential abuses of taxpayer money.

The US essentially deifies the Founding Fathers even though we're living in a world with influences and technologies they could never have anticipated. Why is it ok care so much about that history but not for other countries to care about their history?

The system of government also doesn't seem like a firm basis of argument to me. Yes, many governments have moved on from monarchies, but that doesn't mean that there may not be a monarchy in a country in the future, nor does it mean that a monarchy is an objectively terrible country to live in.

I'd say the grand parent view comes from an uneasiness at anything hereditary, although there's much less objection to hereditary wealth for some reason.

So I'd say it comes from a dichotomy between hereditary wealth and hereditary power, although it's well known that monarchs in democracies are tightly constrained while hereditary wealth brings hereditary power.

It might be the inevitable tie between monarchy and religion which creates a de facto most "correct" national religion. Along with the occasional claim that mythical origins are literally true.

And while comforting, historical and even stabilizing at the moment, it's worth noting that a great many monarchs were quick to join the wrong side of history in WWII.

So, for those without a monarch and the attendant enthusiasm, the institution looks like an extremely expensive and potentially dangerous embodiment of unfairness. Without commenting on the correctness of this view, one can see how it would make monarchies and monarchists incomprehensible to outsiders.

Yes, very well said.

Off the top of my head, most Western European monarchs headed governments in exile on the side of the allied powers, where are you getting that a great many sided with the wrong side of history?

Italy, Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_monarchies#Mode...

Germany was not a monarchy during ww2. The Italian king fought for both axis and allies (and joining the allies was a big reason why he was voted out after the war). Yugoslavia was invaded by the axis, as was Greece.

> The Italian king fought for both axis and allies (and joining the allies was a big reason why he was voted out after the war).

...I'm not sure that a monarch who can be voted out is really an autocrat in the way most people think of when they hear the term.

> So I'd say it comes from a dichotomy between hereditary wealth and hereditary power

Which is, of course, a false dichotomy, since wealth is power.

In the UK I think about 70% of people support the Queen, our head of state. How many people in the US support their head of state? Less than 50%.

In practice, it seems to work well for us. We get a representative that most people support. The US republic fails to do that and their representative is always deeply divisive.

The US president has a higher % of support than prime ministers in most EU countries due to the nature of the two party system. E.g. Trump has higher approval ratings than Macron amongst the relative populations. Each system has advantages/disadvantages.

The queen is not your representative, but you are all her “subjects”. She is literally above the law and is thus, by law, some kind of “higher” human than others, which is hilarious.

I actually respect your current queen, Elizabeth 2, a person - she is doing great given the situation she was born into. But I despise royals as an institution of power and priveledge.

> you are all her “subjects”

This is not true - very few people are subjects.

https://www.gov.uk/types-of-british-nationality/british-subj...

You're very well aware this occurs. Are you trying to ask why, or to make some social commentary, or were you just deploying snark?

I don't think it necessarily reflects what people think, average folks can do very little to shape the narrative.

> its 2019 and people in developed countries still care about (and support with their taxes) kings, queens, emperors and such?!

It's the 21st century and people still seem to consider inheritance of aristocratic levels of wealth acceptable too.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? The discussion that results is generic, shallow, and boring.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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