The 'world's loneliest Princess', Japan's Princess Aiko, faces a difficult decision
By Madhurima Haque|
Japan's Princess Aiko faces an impossible decision จC marry a commoner and lose her crown, or become a chaste shrine maiden for the rest of her days.
Princess Aiko, now 21 years old as of yesterday, is the only daughter of Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako of the Chrysanthemum throne. Since birth, she has been faced with the dilemma of being unable to ascend the throne, as the 1947 Imperial Household Law dictates no female member of the household can become monarch
Princess Toshi, as she is known imperially, also has limited pickings when it comes to marriage. Royal women are only allowed to marry members of nobility, but there are simply none left in Japan. There are currently only 17 living members of the Imperial Family, only four of which are men.
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She does have the option of marrying a commoner and giving up her inheritance?, like her cousin Princess Mako famously did. Mako, the daughter of the Crown Prince Fumihito, who is the younger brother of the current emperor, faced incredible criticism and scrutiny for her decision to marry her college boyfriend and move to the US to become a normal citizen in 2021.
"Leading up to the wedding, conservatives were saying awful things," confirms Julian Ryall, the Telegraph's Japan correspondent.
"One said: 'I hope she gets divorced and has to come back and spend her life as a shrine maiden'. The suggestion is she should be unhappy. She abandoned the family and has to be put back on the correct path."
Becoming a chaste shrine maiden is the same path that remains for Aiko to retain her royal status at this time. In this role she would be required to take on various rites of purity and chastity, undergo various forms of physical and mental training and ultimately work in a Shinto shrine.
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It is supposedly a very hard role to undertake, especially for Aiko, who was bullied during her school years, then home-schooled for the rest of her education. She currently lives with her parents in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo?, away from anyone her own age, giving her the moniker, the "World's Loneliest Princess."
But the tides seem to be shifting, even since Princess Aiko's birth in 2001, when rumblings of the potential to dissolve the agnatic primogeniture, which prioritised male heirs, in favour of absolute primogeniture, which considered all legitimate children.
There have in fact been eight empresses regnant in Japan's history, but ?their successors were always selected from the patrilineal bloodline.
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Before they came to a conclusion, however, Princess Mako's younger brother, Prince Hisahito, was born in 2006, becoming the first male heir to be born in the imperial family in 41 years. Shortly after, in 2007, the then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced he would be dropping the proposal to alter the Imperial Household Law?, making it unlikely that the laws would be changed from Princess Aiko to ascend the throne as she is.
Polls say that Japan is increasingly in favour of a female monarch, with 84 percent of people backing the overturning of tradition.
Christopher Harding, a senior lecturer in Asian history at Edinburgh University, says there is clearly "great public support for reigning empresses, and maybe at some point, someone in the agency or government will come to regard it as an easy PR win.
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"That said, I wonder whether enough young Japanese really care enough about the imperial family to be impressed by a change like this."
Regardless of what happens, this doesn't change much for the world's loneliest Princess, stuck in a maze of bureaucracy and facing an impossible fate.
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