It always amuses me that some of the most progressive and scientifically-advanced countries in the world still cling to their monarchies, even as figureheads, supporting their lavish lifestyles with tax money and public property that could be put to better use elsewhere — I mean, with Queen Elizabeth II probably the richest woman in the world due to her ginormous worldwide real estate holdings that she only has because she inherited them after her predecessors grabbed them through force of arms and oppression, is it really necessary for the government to support her?
Sure, she throws a good state dinner, and she and her family provided a real shot in the arm to London during the Blitz, but what real value is she giving back to England these days?
I’ll say this for the English, though: they long ago got over the idea that the monarch *must* be male, and got a couple of their most effective and longest-serving monarchs in the bargain, back when being the queen meant exercising real power. The Swedes did them one better and have dispensed with the requirement that every male in line to the throne must be disqualified before reaching the women — they changed their rules of accession so that the first-born heir, regardless of gender, would take the throne.
But that still doesn’t get around the problem of inherited power turning queens and princesses into wombs of the state, pressured to produce an heir or be considered a failure. Such retrograde notions of a woman’s worth have had a distressing effect on Crown Princess Masako of Japan, a well-educated, kick-ass international diplomat who reluctantly left her career to marry Crown Prince Naruhito and has been under such intense scrutiny for her failure to produce a male heir (she has a four-year-old daughter who, under current rules, may not become Empress) that she has suffered from stress-related illnesses like shingles.
Things had gotten to the point that the government was considering changing the Imperial Household Law of 1947, which limited the succession of the Chrysanthemum Throne to direct male descendants of the Emperor. Until today, neither Naruhito nor his younger brother, Fumihito, and his wife, Kiko, had any sons. Naruhito and Masako had one daughter, Aiko, and Fumihito and Kiko had two. Today, Kiko had a son, securing the line for one more generation and pushing the issue of a more equitable succession and a recognition of a women’s equal ability to be figureheads for an empire that no longer exists to the back burner. And it’s too bad, because there was some support for allowing Aiko to become Empress, though, predictably, there was opposition from those who worship the Y chromosome:
The proposed bill had stirred unexpectedly fierce opposition from Japan’s conservatives, who argued that the male-only succession was the Chrysanthemum Throne’s defining characteristic. Japan has had eight empresses in the past, but they did not have offspring who succeeded them.
Instead, the throne reverted to a male relative who was related on his father’s side to a previous emperor. That, conservatives argued, had always guaranteed the purity of the male bloodline — or, in more modern terms, the male Y chromosome.
According to this logic, conservatives did not oppose changing the law to allow Princess Aiko to ascend the throne but refused to countenance a revision that would allow her offspring to do so. The Japanese public overwhelmingly supported Princess Aiko’s ascension, according to polls, though support for a matrilineal line dipped by a few percentage points.
Among possible solutions to the succession crisis, conservatives proposed that other branches of the imperial family, abolished during the post-World War II American occupation, be resurrected to find a relative of the emperor with the right Y chromosome. Prince Tomohito of Mikasa, 60, a cousin of the current emperor, argued for the revival of the concubine system, which in the past had made plenty of child-bearing women available to the emperor.
One good thing that may come of the birth of a baby boy: the pressure on Masako may finally relent.
The birth may also end the psychological drama surrounding the royal family, especially Princess Masako. When she gave up a career in diplomacy to marry the crown prince in 1993, she was heralded as a modern Japanese woman who could perhaps even modernize the imperial institution. But the princess was soon confronted with the reality that she was now expected to do only one thing: bear a male heir.
When the couple finally had a child, it was a girl, Princess Aiko. The Imperial Household Agency, the powerful bureaucracy that oversees the royal family, kept up the pressure to have another child, and Princess Masako eventually slipped into a depression.
Her plight led the crown prince to hold an extraordinary news conference two years ago, in which he stated that he would not let his wife be sacrificed for the greater good of the monarchy. “There has been a move,” the prince said, “to deny Masako’s career and personality.”
Ya think?
Princess Kiko, the daughter of a university professor who never had a career before marrying, has become the darling of the Japanese media. By contrast, Princess Masako has increasingly become a target, routinely criticized by the conservative media for her supposed selfishness and lack of common sense.
Sounds like “Don’t Marry A Career Woman,” Japan-style.