Japan’s Prime Minister rejects female succession, upholding traditional male-only imperial rule

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told Parliament on Tuesday that she opposes changing the nation’s male-only imperial succession rules, reaffirming a traditionalist stance despite growing public pressure for reform.

The statement, delivered Feb. 27, marks Takaichi’s most definitive remarks on the matter since her party secured a major victory in the February elections. Takaichi said she respects the 2021 findings of an expert panel, which concluded that restricting the throne to male descendants of the imperial lineage is appropriate.

The succession crisis has become an increasingly contentious issue in Japan. While a 2,600-year tradition limits the throne to men, recent opinion polls indicate strong public support for a female monarch.

Under the current rules, Princess Aiko, the only child of Emperor Naruhito, is ineligible to succeed her father.

Government panels have debated the rules in the past, but the discussion largely subsided following the 2006 birth of Prince Hisahito, the Emperor's nephew. Under Japan’s post-war constitution, the imperial family holds no political power.

Sanae Takaichi’s recent policy declarations represent a calculated political maneuver aimed at shoring up her support among the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s conservative base. Despite her status as a high-ranking female leader, Takaichi has doubled down on traditionalist stances that diverge sharply from public sentiment. National polls consistently show a strong majority of the Japanese electorate favors allowing a female sovereign to ascend the throne—a shift that underscores the tension between the government’s adherence to imperial tradition and modern societal values of gender parity.

The succession crisis is no longer a theoretical concern but an existential one. With Prince Hisahito as the sole remaining male heir, the continuity of the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy is increasingly precarious. Proposed stop-gap measures—such as adopting male members from collateral branches or allowing princesses to maintain royal status after marriage—are widely viewed as cumbersome and temporary fixes. This deadlock reflects a broader Japanese paradox: a nation at the forefront of technological innovation that remains deeply resistant to institutional reform. The persistent pressure on imperial women to produce male heirs serves as a stark reminder of the weight tradition continues to exert over the modernization of the state.

As this is strictly a domestic Japanese matter, it has no direct impact on the Vietnamese-American community—whether in terms of remittances, visa processing (such as F2B, H-1B, or EB-5), or the local businesses that anchor Little Saigon, from our phở restaurants to the nail salon industry. However, the situation serves as a striking point of contrast. While an ancient monarchy struggles to reconcile rigid succession rules with the modern era, the Vietnamese diaspora has successfully forged a new identity within a republic, free from the hereditary constraints and traditional protocols that define such long-standing institutions.