The Gogai Morning

I was going to re-start with the Japan Countryside Guide today, but I just remembered that today September 6th 2006 was the longed day in Japanese politics, society and history.

I suppose it’s pretty huge issue since some of the overseas media have been focusing on this for quite a while now, but anyway Princess Kiko, the wife of the Emperor’s second son gave birth to a boy this morning at 8:27am at Aiiku Hospital in Tokyo.

Some of you may be like “so, what about it? It’s just another happy prince in the country” but you’ll be surprised how much the media – like every kind, all channels and all papers are sooo excited. I would even say they’re almost insane. Because I just got out of bed and my mind was still in a snooze mode, it took some seconds for the news to sink in but I was clapping before I realized I was. I was happy to hear that both the mother and child are in good health, and I was happier to hear that it is a boy.

It’s not like I’m particularly a rightist or an imperial family advocate, but the Japanese imperial family has been going on for 2,600 years on the father’s side. I hear it’s the only family line in the world that’s like that for so long, and it’ll be disappointing if that had to stop after all that history.

The basic issue hasn’t been solved, though. It’s just postponed for a little while. It’s quite clear that even if we postpone the issue now, the same problem will come up some time in the near future. But on the other hand, if it turns out that emperors/empresses from the mother’s side are enabled, it feels like in the long perspective the blood of the imperial family would die out.

If we are to value the “imperial-ness” of the family and to protect and maintain the family line, I think it’s quite reasonable to bring back the former imperial lines that had been driven out from the family by GHQ half a century ago, because it’ll ease the succession issue and enable the to maintain to some extent the “pureness” of the imperial line. It’s only like bringing back the nuclear families into one big family. The real one and only value of the imperial family is the blood, so in that sense it makes more sense than accepting the mother’s line whatsoever.

Either way, I just hope that an issue like this that brings this much trouble to the imperial family would never rise again.

BTW “gogai” is an extra issue of the normal newspapers.