Draft Plan on Japan Imperial Family to be Presented Before Summer Election; No Consensus on Giving Imperial Status to Spouses, Children of Female Members

The Yomiuri Shimbun

20:00 JST, April 18, 2025

A general plan to secure a sufficient number of Imperial family members will be presented before the House of Councillors election campaign kicks off this summer, House of Representatives Speaker Fukushiro Nukaga said at a meeting of ruling and opposition parties on Thursday.

The draft plan will be compiled by heads and vice heads of both chambers of the Diet, and Nukaga said it will be presented at the next meeting.

The plan is expected to allow female members of the Imperial family to retain their Imperial status after marriage, an idea generally endorsed by parties and parliamentary groups. However, opinions remain divided on the status of their spouses and children.

At Thursday’s meeting, most supported an idea to allow female Imperial family members to choose whether to retain their status after marriage, with no objections to extending the condition to all of the emperor’s female descendants on the male line.

However, there is no consensus among the parties on whether the spouses and children should also be considered members of the Imperial family, nor whether to have male children from the male line of former Imperial family branches return to the family by being adopted by current members.

“All opinions have been expressed,” said Vice Speaker Koichiro Gemba after the meeting. “We want to avoid repeating the same discussions and simply letting time pass.”

It was revealed at Thursday’s meeting that a document showing that there are unmarried descendants from the male line from four former Imperial family branches — Kuni, Higashikuni, Kaya and Takeda — was handed out at a separate meeting of government experts on the Imperial family.