PM Remark on Lineage Rule Not about Imperial Succession: Kihara

Tokyo, Feb. 27 (Jiji Press)–Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s parliamentary remark Friday on an expert panel report proposing paternal-line eligibility was not made in reference to the issue of Imperial succession, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said the same day. Takaichi’s remark, which seemed to suggest that the expert panel supported limiting Imperial succession to male heirs from the Imperial Family’s paternal line, instead referred to the panel’s proposal to adopt male members in the paternal line of former Imperial Family branches into the family to restore their status, Kihara said. “An expert panel report said that it is appropriate to limit (eligibility) to men in the paternal line, and I respect this report,” the prime minister said in Friday’s meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower parliamentary chamber. The comment came after she said in the same meeting that the Imperial House Law stipulates that only men in the paternal line can succeed the throne. “There has never been a case where a person who is not from the paternal line inherited the Imperial throne or where the Imperial throne was inherited in the maternal line,” she continued. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]