Caesarean section and Japan's rules of succession

Japan's Princess Kiko is scheduled to give birth, via Cesarean section, on Wednesday morning (Japanese time). The birth is being followed closely by many Japanese, as it will likely affect the struggle to change the rule surrounding Japan's imperial family to allow females to ascend to the imperial throne.

Traditionalists claim that the Japanese imperial family has maintained an unbroken paternal link to its originators. Historians have been able to track the imperial line back to 600 AD. Under current Imperial Household Law, women in the imperial family relinquish all connections with the imperial family (including the imperial name and their allowance) when they marry, unless they marry another member of the imperial family. Thus, only the current emperor's sons may pass the Imperial name along to their children. Until this year, it looked as though neither of the emperor's sons' wives would give birth to male children, and that there would be a move to change the rules of succession to allow the imperial throne to pass to females as well, so that Princess Aiko, only daughter of the Emperor's eldest son, would become empress.

Then, in February 2006, it was announced that Princess Kiko, wife of the Emperor's second oldest son, was pregnant. The birth of a baby boy on Wednesday would likely spell the end, at least for now, of talk for a change in the rules of succession. Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's current Prime Minister and the most powerful proponent for change in the rules of succession, will step down next month. His probable successor, Shinzo Abe, is more conservative and is not believed to champion changing the rules of succession to allow a female heir.

If a girl is born, then the struggle for succession will continue.

The Independent has a good article on the controversy surrounding the succession and Wednesday's planned birth. It also discusses other problems facing the imperial family, particularly the discontent and depression of the Harvard-educated, former-diplomat wife of the emperor's oldest son, in part from the pressure to produce a male heir and in part because she has been forced to abandon her career and ambitions by the powerful imperial bureaucracy.


Even if a boy is born, experts are saying that it will only delay the inevitable: that the rules of succession will need to change. I would tend to agree. While the Imperial Household Agency (IHA), the bureaucracy which surrounds and, to some extent, controls the imperial family, is very powerful, it has not seemed to have had much success in pressuring the imperial family to produce more heirs. If the imperial family continues as it has for the past few generations, with small families of 3 or fewer children per couple (and more importantly, an average of less than two children per couple), it would seem to be only a matter of time before Japan is left without a male heir and is forced to change the rules of succession or watch the imperial line end.

The article says that only a system of imperial concubines allowed the paternal line to make it to the present day. Now that the concubine system has been abolished the imperial family has faced increased problems in producing enough male heirs to ensure a paternal line.

Also, from the previously mentioned article:

"Soon after Japan's 1945 defeat in World War II, 11 families on the collateral line, which served as a safety net to produce male heirs for the Imperial family, lost their Imperial status and became ordinary citizens.

Many opponents of the idea of a reigning empress have maintained that the Imperial status of those former relatives should be restored so they can produce a male who would marry a woman from the Imperial family to maintain the paternal line."

This sets up a possible (though somewhat obtuse) strategy that would allow the IHA to produce a male heir to the throne even if Wednesday's birth does not result in a new imperial prince. It would seem to run counter to current popular sentiments in Japan to rely upon an arranged marriage.