Japan Upper House Panel to Vote on Imperial Family Bill on Thurs.

Tokyo, July 15 (Jiji Press)–The board of a Japanese House of Councillors committee on Wednesday agreed to take a vote on a bill to revise the Imperial House Law on Thursday. The Upper House committee is likely to approve the bill with support from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, as well as the Democratic Party for the People, Komeito and Sanseito from the opposition side. The bill, aimed at helping to secure a sufficient number of Imperial Family members, is expected to be enacted as early as Friday with approval from the full Upper House. It cleared the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, last week. Under the bill, paternal-line male descendants of 11 former Imperial Family branches can be adopted back into the family, and female Imperial Family members can retain their status in the family after marriage. Sons born to the adoptees will be eligible to ascend the throne. An additional clause calling for a review every 30 years is attached to the government-sponsored legislation. The ruling coalition previously aimed to have the Upper House committee take a vote on the bill on Wednesday. But opposition parties reacted angrily to calls within the ruling bloc to extend the current parliamentary session beyond its scheduled end on Friday. Chief Upper House negotiators from the LDP and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition force in the chamber, agreed Wednesday to postpone the committee vote until Thursday. At Wednesday’s Upper House committee meeting, CDP lawmaker Hiroyuki Nagahama argued that the husbands and children of female Imperial Family members should be allowed to have Imperial Family status. In response, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said, “Both the husbands and children (of female members) will not be given the status,” stating that the government did not include their status in the Imperial House Law amendment because the matter was not mentioned in the parliamentary “consensus,” reached in talks between ruling and opposition parties last month. Still, Kihara left room for future discussions on the matter by parliament. Nagahama also asked why the scope of potential adoptees is limited to paternal-line male descendants from the 11 former Imperial Family branches. Kihara said that there was a time when the branches were part of the Imperial Family under the current Constitution and that the male descendants would have had the right of succession to the throne if the branches had not left the family in 1947. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]