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Abdication, Succession and Japan's Imperial Future: An Emperor's Dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

John Breen
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Abstract

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On 30 April 2019, 86-year old Emperor Akihito made history. He became the first emperor in 200 years to abdicate, yielding the throne to his son. The trigger for this historic moment was an extraordinary event that took place three years earlier. In August 2016, the emperor appeared on NHK and all TV channels to address the nation. His purpose? To intimate his desire to abdicate. The address, of questionable constitutionality, set in motion a debate about the nature of emperorship in 21st Century Japan, and led directly to the April abdication. This article sets out to explore some of the questions raised by the emperor's address, and its historic outcome: What are emperors for? What is their place in contemporary Japan? What, indeed, are their future prospects?

Keywords

Emperor AkihitoEmperor NaruhitoabdicationNippon KaigiKobori KeiichirōMurata HarukiAbe ShinzōSun GoddessIse Shrinessensosokuidaijōsai
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 17 , Issue 9 , May 2019 , e3
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2019

References

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