An interesting article in Fortune titled “Oh boy: Prince imperils Japan’s economy.” (Or maybe it’s “Why Japan needed a female heir to the throne,” if you go by the title in the .html doc.)
There’s been no shortage of articles claiming the opposite—saying that this new imperial baby will pump an additional ¥150 billion into the economy, or whatever. I can’t say that I really get that argument. What do consumers run out and buy to celebrate a royal birth? Commemorative coins? Diapers? Cribs? Does this really make people want to have kids of their own?
Who can say . . . The article linked above notes that the economy is hampered by attitudes and systems that are hostile to women’s full participation in the workplace, and sees the “thank the kami it’s a boy, and not another worthless girl-child” aspect of this birth as a sign that those harmful things aren’t going away anytime soon.
If this kid had been a girl, and the country had to change the Imperial House Law to allow women to succeed to the chrysanthemum throne, I don’t think it would instantly push companies to hire women for executive-track positions and local governments to create more robust daycare facilities and other support systems for working parents. But it would have been a sign that someone in Kasumigaseki is actually thinking about matters of equality and recognizing them as more important than tradition for the sake of tradition.
by Butch
09 Sep 2006 at 05:03
If it had been a girl, and the wife hits “The Change” could he change the law/custom or does he get a concubine to try for the heir?
by Durf
11 Sep 2006 at 13:45
Well, that’s been the big debate, at least until this latest kid showed up and staved off the problem for another generation or so. Some people want to see the concubine system brought back. Others want to reinstate some former imperial houses, which were stripped of royal status at the end of World War II. And another group—which I believe is the largest—thinks the law needs to be rewritten to allow women to sit on the throne, and more importantly, to allow a child of such a reigning empress to succeed to the throne later on.
One of the magazines I work on has been covering the whole deal. I find it tiresome, personally, but the editorial board seems to dig the whole imperial succession flap. Here’s one article from a recent issue that talks about this stuff.
by tim
18 Sep 2006 at 05:04
Durf,
Don’t some of the people want their royal status restored b/c the families are active in the uh, ultra-nationalist movement?
by Durf
18 Sep 2006 at 22:01
I wouldn’t be surprised if the members of those houses leaned well to the right, but once they got back into the imperial family they would lose a whole lot of their political voice in any case. (And it isn’t as though they’re on the radar much to begin with.)
I think they’re irrelevant people who were kicked out of a now-irrelevant family. They don’t trouble me much.