TOKYO (Kyodo) — The House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill it began debating earlier in the day that addresses the dwindling number of imperial family members, taking a major step toward changing a decades-old system.<\/p>\n
Following the lower chamber’s approval, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition ally, the Japan Innovation Party, aim to pass the legislation through the House of Councillors for its enactment during the current parliamentary session, through July 17.<\/p>\n
In a vote that took place only hours after discussions started, the bill for the first substantial amendment of the 1947 Imperial House Law was backed by the ruling camp, which holds more than two-thirds of the lower chamber’s seats, a threshold required to override the upper house when pushing through bills.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government submitted the bill late last month, but a parliamentary stalemate stemming from opposition forces’ backlash against what they say is the ruling bloc’s high-handed approach to other key legislation had prevented debate from starting.<\/p>\n
The bill’s two pillars are to permit the imperial family to adopt males aged 15 or older who are descended from emperors through the male line in 11 former branch families, and also allow female members to retain their imperial status even after marrying commoners.<\/p>\n
While banning adopted members themselves from becoming emperor, the legislation would allow their male descendants to be eligible to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne.<\/p>\n
The bill does not mention female or maternal-line emperors, an idea that has garnered public support.<\/p>\n
Under current law, only males who have an emperor on their father’s side can ascend the throne, and female members lose their imperial status upon marriage.<\/p>\n
The number of eligible successors and imperial family members has been declining.<\/p>\n
The bill was crafted based on a proposal compiled by the lower and upper house speakers and vice speakers after hearing from all 13 parliamentary parties and groups, focusing on how to ensure an adequate number of imperial family members.<\/p>\n
The bill, however, incorporates ideas that were not included in the proposal, such as allowing male children of adoptees from former branch families to be eligible to become emperor, and has come under criticism from some opposition parties.<\/p>\n
Updating the Imperial House Law was part of a deal that brought the coalition together on Oct. 20 and helped make Takaichi Japan’s first female prime minister the following day.<\/p>\n
Parliament had been gridlocked from late June as many opposition parties refused to discuss two key bills sponsored by the ruling camp, one to cut lower house seats and the other to set up a “second capital.”<\/p>\n
The opposition forces also sought intensive deliberation and debate sessions between their leaders and Takaichi, demanding that the prime minister be held accountable over media reports that surfaced in April alleging her camp made online videos smearing Takaichi’s political opponents.<\/p>\n
The situation normalized after the ruling camp on Tuesday agreed to make some concessions, including giving up plans to ram the seat-reduction bill through parliament during the ongoing session.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Friday, a joint meeting of committees of both houses officially decided that one-on-one debate sessions between Takaichi and opposition leaders will take place on Wednesday afternoon. The last such sessions were held in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO (Kyodo) — The House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill it began debating earlier in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[36999,37000,4635,36998,8,410,3454,36997,33,6879,8133],"class_list":["post-56136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-1-day","tag-debate","tag-house","tag-imperial","tag-japan","tag-japans","tag-law","tag-lower","tag-nihon","tag-passes","tag-revision"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}