Conservatives submit ex-imperial member restoration proposal to Abe

Hell no! Let the women become Empress and follow the line in succession not sex!

Anything to avoid a woman I guess

Pathetic! Just allow woman to become heir, silly old dinogigis.

Adding more people means more tax. Enough let the system end. If the elites want this social grand stand then let them pay for it but leave the People's taxes out of it.

Abe said more work is needed in spreading awareness among people about the difference between a female emperor and an emperor of matrilineage, whose father's side of the family is not of imperial ancestry.

AKA- I don't wanna, and I'm going to ignore the will of the people as long as I can. Standard J-pol statement "spreading awareness" is codespeak for badgering, lying, cajoling, and if that all fails, flat out ignoring what we don't like.

Abe said more work is needed in spreading awareness among people about the difference between a female emperor and an emperor of matrilineage, whose father's side of the family is not of imperial ancestry.

Let me see, the Emperor has a daughter, his blood runs in her veins, if she marries a commoner, and has a child, then that child would no longer have imperial lineage?

Abe, you REALLY are pulling at straws here if you think the people need to be educated about anything here!

More like YOU are the one who needs to be taught about treating women equally!

The modern notion of gender equality doesn’t apply here. Male only succession of emperor is the imperial tradition that has survived for nearly 2000 years and there’s no apparent reason to change it now.

Anything but equality of the sexes. Got to keep the women perpetually subjugated while keeping the grift going. What a sham of a country.

Just let the women be it for F*s sake.

the Liberal Democratic Party group

Nippon Kaigi. Why is Kyodo so reluctant to use their name?

The modern notion of gender equality doesn’t apply here. Male only succession of emperor is the imperial tradition that has survived for nearly 2000 years and there’s no apparent reason to change it now.

Do you even take the time to READ an article before commenting? Let me guess...no!

The 1947 Imperial House Law limits successors to males of the patrilineage.

Whether "conservatives" like it or not, ultimately it will be the people of Japan who decide the future of their Emperor system.

The imperial family and the former collateral branches share a common ancestor some 600 years ago.

Are they talking about the korean emperor or the FEMALE goddess of the sun?

Both the photo and the article seem more like the J-version of "Handmaid's Tale".

Radical solution in a purportedly democratic country, why not put all the options to the tax paying people in a referendum and let them decide which solution to go for!

Who are these conservatives and why do we need them? It looks to me they dont belong in this day and age and should be slowly weeded out.

The old coots have not a leg to stand on when arguing against a female ascending to the throne.

-- "There have never been female empresses." Nope. Try again.

-- "Well, that was a long time ago. Times have changed." Oh, so you are saying that what they did a long time ago was not proper. So, does that mean the current Emperor is illegitimate, because of what they did a long time ago.

-- "Well, it is just proper for a male to be Emperor." Oh, right, I see. So, its OK to have descended from a female goddess, but female empresses are.... bad?!

The public will never stand for their naked misogyny!

MeiyouwentiToday 07:38 am JST

The modern notion of gender equality doesn’t apply here. Male only succession of emperor is the imperial tradition that has survived for nearly 2000 years and there’s no apparent reason to change it now.

For a person who constantly has opinions on the saving graces of Japan, it's quite a shock that you didn't know - as Osaka-Doug and others pointed out - that Japan has indeed had women heads of royalty. And it was only in recent history that women were essentially banned from ascending to the throne.

Why wouldn't you know this?

Unfortunately, as the article indicates, this is a further attempt by the ultra-cons, to drag Japan back into it's supposedly glorious past.

LOL

JAPAN, What is wrong with your thinking? You make women secondary citizens, shame shame shame. You should just let the line of the imperial family die out and shelve the nonsense of a royal house. If your actually a descendant of a "GOD" LOL, then fix the problems your country has NOW!

Relics of the past trying to maintain a foothold in the present.

Japan will never change! However, those dresses the women are wearing in the photo are straight from the sixties. I guess that is an upgrade (of sorts).

How can a bunch of old backward-thinking old codgers get to run a country for so long?

oh yeah,just remembered that the electorate is totally inert,apathetic and is only hoping that everything will be OK.

Trouble is that with leaders who would rather only look into the past and not the future....everything isn’t going to be OK.

Amaterasu forbid that a woman becomes the head of a constitutional monarchy where the monarch is supposed to be nothing more than a figurehead...unless these ossans are still living with the idea of restoring an empire or something

I heard somewhere that GHQ and MacArthur presumed the imperial family cannot continue when they stick to the male lineage with one husband one wife rule in democratic Japan after the war. That was one reason they were not in haste to abolish the emperor.

Is this really necessary? Do Japanese people really benefit from these?

Work with what you have and in the means of a budget that works. The people seem to be ok with an woman Empress, why can't the Abe regime recognize this and instead insist on adding more costs which will squeeze the peoples taxes even further.

I have never been as disgusted with Japan's political 'leadership' as I am now.

Why when I read that, do I get the feeling that some people think there is something dirty of being born of a woman moreover if it is to be a woman ?

If they have so much of a problem with that, several way to solve it :

allow same sex marriage, force imperial male decent to marry each other. Easy, use technology to make a baby out of these (you take some lady gamete remove the nuclear put the nuclear of one of the men them fertilize it with the gamete of the other one then everything back in some incubator. = this way there is almost no woman involved. 100% patrilineage, they should be happy.

Or easier they could go see a specialist to get your problem with women fixed.

Why is this so important to supposedly have the same Y chromosome of the man which is believed to have had sex with a godness ? Having the X of the godness should more worth it if they want my point of view thought even more impossible to track than the Y one.

Worth remembering that mitochondrial DNA can only be traced through the female line.

Who's you daddy then?

Never certain!

Nippon Kaigi calling the shots again

Good on the Japanese government for attempting to maintain tradition. Of course commenters who have no roots in Japan to begin with wouldn't care about such things, but thankfully the Japanese government doesn't answer to them.

But it's not tradition?

Good on the Japanese government for attempting to maintain tradition. 

It's not the government, it's one faction of the LDP! But seeing as how damn near all the LDP are right-wing nuts, maybe you are right!

Of course commenters who have no roots in Japan to begin with wouldn't care about such things, but thankfully the Japanese government doesn't answer to them.

many other foreign monarchies once had only male succession, many have now changed and guess what women do just as good as job as being the head of monarchies as men. Why does Japan think they're so different or special over other monarchies to not allow female succession!? yes all monarchies have traditions and most have changed as society changes, Japan is a far different country than it was 100yrs ago

Of course commenters who have no roots in Japan to begin with wouldn't care about such things, 

oh because the Japanese monarchy is so special and unique that foreigners couldnt possible understand, something like that!?

Oh yeah, god forbid any women take the throne. Also if they only use patrilineage, there is no guarantee they're even related. It's pretty easy to establish someone's mother, but for most of human history there was no sure way to establish someone's father.

This is hilarious. These old goats of the Nippon Kaigi (even though the article won't stipulate that, Kyodo news, suprise suprise...), are getting desperate.

They need to do things like this to keep their profile in the news, but fortunately for us Living in the 21st century, no one gives a toss.

Let it it guys, no one cares.

I really want to see an Empress ascending to the thrown. And all the old generation Japanese male getting confused about whether they should bow or not. That would be epic. :)

Why is that a group of people consisting of males only get to decide what women should or should not do? How has that become normalized?

Many serious issues here, but I just have to say that those "gowns" have got to go! Shapeless, unattractive, and yes, echoes of the Handmaid's Tale. Japan has the beautiful and elegant kimono tradition. Why are the women not dressed in those? The kimono does not demean a woman and is an admired and authentic garb. Those dresses just look....cheesy.

OK, back to the really serious issues such as the line of succession. Oh, what if the next Empress of Japan wore glasses and rational shoes? The geezers would die of shock, right?

This actually ties in with a fundamental of law - if someone has been found not guilty of a crime but then the govt makes what they did do a crime, can the govt re-arrest with those charges since what they did was before the law was enacted?