From the Asahi Shimbun:
They say that as though it’s a bad thing.
Seriously, what are the arguments in favor of Japan maintaining the Imperial system?
Arguments against, I think, would include:
[ol][li]It elevates one person to a prestigious governmental position on the sole basis of birth.[/li]The office of Emperor isn’t really a working part of the government and thus is a major drain on public funds for no other purpose than having one particular family enjoy a luxurious lifestyle.[/ol]
Firstly this is a really misleading title. The Imperial System is an alternative to the Metric System. Nothing to do with monarchy. Most people are probably going to think this is another debate on why the US hasn’t gone metric.
As for the question at hand, the fact that the institution has been an integral part of Japanese culture for millennia is sufficient reason all by itself. It really doesn’t need anymore justification. I know there is a tendency for many people to want to slaughter sacred cows because they don’t produce meat, but not everything that fails to be commercially profitable is wrong. Some things have a value even if they cost money.
While it’s true that this is a government position, as you point out the Emperor isn’t really a working part of the government. He holds no real power and can’t directly influence the lives of anybody, all he inherits is prestige and position. Which leaves just the objection that it raises one person to a prestigious position on the sole basis of birth, the same basic objection could be made about any of Bill Gates’ children. That is an inevitable outcome of allowing inheritance, yet it’s hard to see what the alternative is. People inherit wealth and status from people who inherited wealth and status etc. That’s equally true whether the wealth was first obtained last generation or 10, 000 years ago. No, it’s not strictly ‘fair’ that people have massive advantages by accident of birth, but that’s the way things are, and it’s not immediately clear how we prevent it from happening. Stamping out the the Japanese royal family isn’t going to have any real impact on that particular injustice.
To me it seems that this can only be objected to if we have a very specific objection to people inheriting technically governmental positions of no power or authority. If we object to the unfairness of inheritance generally then there are far bigger things to worry about than this tiny example, while if we worry.
Meanwhile the cultural and nationalistic importance of the institution far outweighs what seems to be a purely hypothetical principle objection that part of what is inherited is technically tied to governance. If this position granted real power and governance I could understand the objection, but as with the European monarchies all that is really inherited is money and a silly hat. Beyond that nothing is inherited that the people don’t willingly choose to give via their elected representatives.
The other point is that this all started somewhere. I’m not sure where in the case of Japan, but at some time someone rose to power and gained wealth through what were then legitimate or legitimized means. At various times that power was weakened via negotiation, but part of those negotiations was always that the power would be inherited. What right does anyone actually have to break faith with those deals now in the name of fairness? This is akin to so many broken treaties. In order to avoid bloodshed both sides sit down and negotiate, one side gives away some advantage and the other side, after regrouping and re-arming attacks to force still more advantage, which it then uses to allow still more attacks and so on. That is not fair or just even if it’s legal. If people in the past had the opportunity to delegitimise the Emporer they should have done so. The idea of watering down the position and gradually getting the public ready to accept destroying it hardly seems fair. We have to ask whether those people would have accepted the watering down in the first place if they knew what was coming. If we conclude that they wouldn’t then we can hardly say it’s fair to break the deals of previous generations can we?
I did not say “Imperial System of Measures” so therefore my thread title is not misleading. At any rate, once one reads the OP, there is no ambiguity. You will also note that the article which I quoted expressly used the term imperial system.
Bill Gates’ children are not inheriting a constitutional office nor a right to be supported by tax dollars. The male child of the Emperor is.
Regardless of when Japan originally had a monarch, the current imperial system in Japan actually began at the end of World War II.
The deal that could’ve broken the imperial lineage was the unconditional surrender of Japan at the end of that war.
FWIW: I’m obviously against a monarchial system. I’m really curious though what its current advantages are.
I could tell you what some of the practical advantages are in the case of the Canadian monarchy: for example, the reserve powers that offer the government a constitutional way out of extremely tight fixes, but that are precisely balanced by a very heavy tradition of non-intervention; a head of state who is theoretically (and de facto) apolitical; a repository of traditions that would be less appropriately dealt with by the elected government; the repose of practical state power in the legislature rather than the head of state; and so forth.
Naturally these are debatable (I happen to be going against my party line here), but these are some of the advantages I see.
As for the Japanese system, you’re right that they really have none of the above practical advantages. I suppose it’s like a historic building; it may be drafty, too small, and a money sink, but we don’t just tear it down.
I’ve already epxlained why objecting to the inheritance of an office with nopowers seems to be a purely intellectual concern. With no power whatsoever from the office it’s just a silly hat that is being inherited. How people choose to react to that hat either directly or by asking their elected represenatives to legislate reaction is entirely their perosnal choice, and at any time they can change their minds. As such it seems like a purely intellectual excercise to object to somehting that has no real world effect.
I also adressed the issue that this costs money to maintain. Mt Rushmore costs money to maintain. That doens;t mean that we should tear it down. Not everything that costs money is valueless.
Yes, and…?
Yes, and it didn’t, therefore no one has a right to unilaterally rebroker the deal now in the name of fairness. A deal was struck to maintain the monarchy, it owuld be injust to renege on that deal.
As I said, they are the precise same advantages as Mt. Rushmore or the White House, both of which cost vast amounts of money to mantain.
The simple fact that something costs money to maintain isn’t actually relevant here, Blake. What I’m addressing is the simple fact of paying someone GOVERNMENT MONEY just because he’s the son of someone. I guess I just prefer someone who gets paid by the government to actually work for that pay.
It isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, the taxpayer’s concern what a private individual does with that private individual’s own money.
Oops. That all caps in my posting above should be italicized instead of all caps. I’m not yelling.
And as I said, to me it seems like you are arguing a technical, hypothetical, intellectual objection with no real-world effects.
You don’t object to people being privileged by accident of birth.
You don’t obejct to the government spending money to maintain cultural white elephants.
You don’t even object to the government paying people to maintain said cultural white elphants.
What you object to is very specifically that someone inherits a position wherein the government pays him money to maintain a cultural white elephant. You don’t object to any individual part of this equation, but just to this very specific coincidence.
Your objection is purely intellectual because it has no real world effects. Look at it like this: If the position of Emperor was open to selection you wouldn’t obect one bit to this situation. You don’t object to the caretakers of Mt Rushmore being paid after all, and they are just as much a drain on the economy and ultimately just as useless to the country as the Emporer. Similarly you don’t object one bit to the government funding actors, military bands etc. for various cultural events. All that you object to is that this position isn’t open to public selection.
But what would the advertisement for the position of person to play the emporer look like? Well to maintain any cultural worth surely the first selection criterion would have to be “eldest son of the previous Emperor”, wouldn’t it?
So the real-world consequences of your objection are nil. Provided that we advertise this position like any other position that maintains a cultural white elephant then what excatly can you object to? The person no longer inherits the job of mainatinaing a cultural tradition, he is employed to do it because he meets the selction criteria.
I really think that your sole objection here is that only one person on the planet can maintain this cultural tradition. Lots of people can maintain national parks, monuments, dress up as Pilgrims and so forth so you don’t object to the government funding those jobs. But because only one person can maintain the cultural traditon of monarchy that’s objectionable somehow. Now while I can kind of see why that is, I also hold that it has no real-world effect.
Allow me to invent a silly hypothetical.
The White House has no more value to the US than the monarchy does to Japan because we could certainly sell it for far more than it would actually cost to build a new one. Imagine that, for some undefined reason, only the eldest son of one specific family could do maintainence that would stop the White House from collapsing into rubble, and his eldest son inherited that ability and so forth. Would you object to the US government paying this glorified janitor to maintain the White House, even though he inherits the ability to maintain the building through birth rather than training and competition?
I suspect that you would have no objection at all because hypothetically someone else might come along and put in a lower bid even though we know they never will. Yet you object to the Emperor, who is doing exactly the same thing. And I can’t quite see why. The man inherited certain traits that make him the only man capable of mainataining a national institution. What possible objection can you have to the state paying him to do so?
I guess I missed responding to something there, Blake. I actually do object to the government spending money to maintain white elephants. Now, I don’t object to a private person spending his own money to maintain his own white elephants, even if one of those white elephants happens to be his son.
I don’t object to someone getting money from an accident of birth if that money is his parent’s funds.
The hypothetical you propose, I think (and I may be mistaken in what I think), may not be appropriate because the White House really does serve a purpose other than as a tourist draw.
What real purpose does the Emperor serve? And the only national institution the man’s maintaining is himself. Yes, I agree that I find that objectionable.
Ah well, that’s an entirely different kettle of sashimi then. You are of course entitled to your opinion, but it’s quite clear that most people feel that maintaining a strong cultural tradition is important, and I agree with them.
Humans are emotional social creatures, not machines. We derive benefits, even if only emotional, from being able to define our culture with physical symbols and rituals. That is why every single human culture in history has done precisely that. By suggesting that the state not maintain such cultural traditions is about as radical idea as I have ever heard, seeing that it overturns 12o, 000 years of human history in one fell swoop.
I can understand why you could believe that the state shouldn’t maintain something as nebulous as cultural reference points, but to me it seems an awful lot like communism; a good idea on paper but totally incompatible with human nature.
So does the Emperor. In fact I never even considered that he is a tourist draw, my entire point is that the monarchy is an important part of Japanese culture.
Now I would be interested in hearing what purpose the White House serves that the Japanese monarchy does not that couldn’t be better served by selling the building to Bill Gates and building a new set of offices for the President.
After all this seems to be mainly about the economics. If the US government put the White House up for auction I’m sure it would go for several billions. With that money they could build build new presidential offices and invest the rest. As such it seems like the White House is a massive white elephant and should be sold to the highest bidder.
No, the institution is the monarchy. The man is merely the monarch. They are linked but separable. The instiutution will almost certainly outlive the man as it has outlived dozens of his predecesors.
Actually, it looks like the man’s death will be the death of the institution. That’s because of another bit of cultural tradition the Japanese government’s been maintaining: treating women as 2nd class.
Perhaps a better thread title might be, “Why keep the Japanese monarchy?”
Although I’m proud to live in a great republic that shed its monarchy over 200 years ago, I think there are some advantages to having a constitutional monarchy even today, as the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan and some other W European countries do. The reserve powers of the monarchy are a useful device in times of crisis, as noted above. The pomp and circumstance of the monarchy fulfills a useful social function by encouraging a healthy sense of national identity and pride. A monarchy (particularly in the UK) also brings in tourist money, and distinguishes the country from others. There’s something to be said for history and custom, and a mystical sense of the monarchy as the embodiment of the nation - when kept in proper perspective - is, IMHO, beneficial. The British monarchy was enormously important in maintaining morale during The Blitz, for instance.
If I were Japanese, I would strongly support changing the Imperial succession law to permit women to ascend the throne. There have been Japanese empresses before, and I see no persuasive reason why there could not be others.
I’m personally hoping to see the Republic of Canada in my lifetime, with the best opportunity likely being the death of Elizabeth II, though if Australia would get off their duffs and lead the way, the transition would probably be a lot easier here.
And the metric system is better.
I’m curious as to what those might be, that would not be essentially self-referential.
Oh, you Canadians. Give’em an inch, and they’ll take a kilometer.
That was exactly my first thought until I opened up the thread and read the actual OP. 
To answer the OP it maintains a cultural heritage and links to a nations past. It provides symbols to the people that they can identify themselves with. Its good for tourism as well…I always go visit the royal palace when I go to England (I’m assuming there is something similar in Japan…I’ve been to Japan but it was business and I never really looked into it).
-XT
I suppose it is an internal constitutional arrangement that the Japanese people should be allowed to decide.
It’s a bad system that brings out the worst traits of the Japanese: the infantile and reactionary side. Right-wingers still like to pretend that he’s the Emperor of the pre-War era. The Japanese media fawns over the crown prince, his wife, their kid. Japanese papers use honorifics for the Emperor that they never use for regular folks. There is really a double consciousness on the matter: the people fawn but have no clear concept in their minds as to what the Emperor is (the constitution calls him the “symbol of Japanm,” so sometimes people will parrot that), but they give him the respect and deference he once received when he was more or less an absolute monarch, if not a god. Nothing about this hodgepodge is bound to please Americans.
I agree with Monty. There is no need for government to fund infantile fantasies of royalty and a few persons’ privilege.
The Japanese monarchy is not very analogous to the British version. Most imperial property is closed to the public; it’s effect on tourism is negligible, especially since Japanese tourism is negligable to begin with. Their lives are extremely secrative.
The system is also crappy for the royals themselves. They live as virtual prisoners of the Kunaicho. It is highly unclear just how they are restricted, but the crown prince, for example, can’t just bust out into the streets of Tokyo for a bowl of ramen.
Dumb system.
Aeschines: IIRC, one newspaper in Japan got a lot of irate letters to the editor when they referred to the emperor as the sovereign. The Japanese constitution declares the people of the nation to be sovereign, not the emperor.
Could be. I’d like to see what the actual Japanese word used was.
It is not quite PC in Japan to recommend dismantling the monarchy, but there are many liberals who hate it. The letters may have been from them. I’m sure the wingnuts didn’t mind.