Japan<\/a>\u00a0may have its first ever female prime minister, but her government\u2019s attempts to avoid a royal succession crisis are making the chances of a woman taking the imperial throne ever slimmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWith just three eligible heirs to the Chrysanthemum throne \u2013 and two of them 60 or over \u2013 the imperial family is facing a succession crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Japan\u2019s monarchy has for centuries maintained male-only succession, which is on-brand for a deeply patriarchal society where men dominate other spheres of life such as business and politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, that rule has come to threaten the very survival of the world\u2019s oldest monarchy which, in recent decades, has spawned more daughters than sons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To solve the dearth of heirs, government ministers have proposed reinstating former branches of the royal family, thereby expanding the pool of male successors. The changes are awaiting parliamentary approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it has left scholars, opposition politicians and some citizens wondering: why not just let women take the throne?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CNN: Japan\u00a0may have its first ever female prime minister, but her government\u2019s attempts to avoid a royal succession crisis are making the chances of a woman taking the imperial throne ever slimmer. With just three eligible heirs to the Chrysanthemum throne \u2013 and two of them 60 or over \u2013 the imperial family is facing a succession crisis. Japan\u2019s monarchy has for centuries maintained male-only succession, which is on-brand for a deeply patriarchal society where men dominate other spheres of life such as business and politics. Now, that rule has come to threaten the very survival of the world\u2019s oldest… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59452"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59455,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59452\/revisions\/59455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/59453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}