Pro-govt newspaper shocks with call for female emperor in Japan

Idea blasted by hawkish media which says it would lead to 'Japan ceasing to be Japanese'

- Walter Sim

TOKYO - The two main conservative media outlets in Japan are waging a battle for public opinion, after the Yomiuri newspaper broached an idea long held to be taboo and one that breaks from right-wing values.

"We should not rule out the possibility of a female emperor, or an emperor through a female line," the Yomiuri declared in its page one story on May 15, as it unveiled policy proposals on the question of imperial succession.

"If we continue to insist on male descendants in the male line, the survival of the symbolic emperor system will be in jeopardy."

That the influential Yomiuri Shimbun - Japan's largest broadsheet with a daily circulation of 6.2 million copies - was giving policy recommendations is not surprising. Since 1994, it has leveraged its position as the nation's most-read newspaper to drive policy agenda through its proposals.

However, what has rippled through Japan's political hallways was how the Yomiuri, often considered to be pro-government for its alignment with the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has embraced a stance that is more in line with the political left.

The hawkish Sankei newspaper, with a circulation of under one million, launched a broadside, enlisting commentators who accused the Yomiuri of "misleading the public" with "sloppy content".

Its chief editorial writer Satoshi Sakakibara said the Yomiuri was bordering on blasphemy and would lead to "Japan ceasing to be Japanese".

A Sankei editorial noted that legacy newspapers should not jump on the popular bandwagon and engage in "knee-jerk politics, by rushing to conclusions based on superficial information without considering the weight of history or responsibility to the future".

The culture war comes as the future of Japan's monarchy - the world's oldest hereditary royal lineage dating to 660BC - is now a hot-button issue in the country's Parliament, due to the dwindling number of political heirs.