Diet Chamber Heads to Present Proposal for Imperial Family Next Week

Tokyo, May 15 (Jiji Press)–Presiding officers of both chambers of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, plan to present as early as next week a proposal on measures to secure a sufficient number of Imperial Family members for stable Imperial succession, Eisuke Mori, speaker of the House of Representatives, the lower Diet chamber, said Friday. The speaker and vice speaker of the Lower House and the president and vice president of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, will present the proposal to ruling and opposition parties. At a press conference, Mori also reiterated his aim to enact a bill to revise the Imperial House Law to implement the measures for the Imperial Family during the ongoing Diet session, which will run through July 17. The Upper and Lower House presiding officers hope to quickly build consensus based on the two ideas presented by a Japanese government expert panel–one allowing female Imperial Family members to retain their Imperial status after marriage and the other allowing male members in the paternal line of former Imperial Family branches that left the family in 1947 to be adopted back into the family. Parties have largely supported the first idea, while the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, have prioritized the second. Earlier on Friday, the presiding officers held a meeting of party representatives at the Lower House speaker’s official residence to discuss measures to secure sufficient Imperial Family members for stable Imperial succession. The ruling and opposition parties began discussions on the matter in 2024. “We would like to present our proposal after considering as many opinions as possible,” Mori said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]