Introduction
On July 18, 2026, following the enactment of the revised Imperial House Law, Sankei Shimbun published an editorial titled “Welcoming the Enactment of the Revised Imperial House Law to Protect the Imperial Succession: Realizing Adoption in a Tranquil Environment.” A close reading of this text — placed in the editorial column of a national newspaper, a space that is nominally supposed to serve as a reference point for national debate — reveals, in strikingly overt form, the structure I have repeatedly identified as “the thought of control” (制御の思想).
This piece uses that editorial as material to concretely examine the methodological fragility of editorial culture in Japan’s major media.
1. The Structure of Assertion Without Grounds
The editorial states, in effect, that the most important principle of imperial succession — patrilineal succession — must not be broken on a whim by whichever generation happens to be alive today.
Breaking this sentence down logically reveals a double defect.
First, the premise itself — that patrilineal succession is “the most important principle” — is a proposition that requires proof, yet it is asserted without any. Second, from this unproven premise the editorial leaps to the conclusion that the current debate is therefore a “whim.” This is nothing other than classic question-begging.
The choice of the word “whim” (思い付き) also deserves scrutiny. It is a rhetorical move that discredits the motives and intellectual sincerity of the opposing position before that position has been substantively examined. This is not argument — it is the neutralization of dissent through personalized labeling.
2. The Hollowing-Out of “Historical” — Through the Lens of Barthes and Hobsbawm
The editorial continues, asserting that the revised law opens a path to preserving the legitimacy and symbolic status of the Emperor as a historical institution at the foundation of the nation, and expresses a wish for the present generation to protect and pass on to the next generation the imperial lineage woven together by successive emperors and the ancestors of the people.
Here the word “historical” is repeated, yet there is no reference whatsoever to specific historical sources or scholarship. What Roland Barthes identified in Mythologies was precisely this operation: myth (mythos) mimics history (historia) while stripping away its verifiability, hollowing it out. By repeating the adjective “historical,” the text drapes itself in the appearance of empirical historical description while containing no verifiable content whatsoever.
Similarly, regarding the former collateral branches of the imperial family (kyū-miyake), the editorial claims that for over 500 years — from the 102nd Emperor Go-Hanazono to the 124th Emperor Shōwa — successive emperors protected these lines as companions safeguarding the imperial succession through crises of extinction.
The editorial offers no indication of what historical sources support this claim of “500 years of protection.” What Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of “invented tradition” revealed was that many traditions in the modern era, while narrated as if continuous since antiquity, were in fact relatively recent constructions serving specific political needs. The historical narration in this editorial appears to repeat precisely that rhetoric of “invented tradition.”
3. The Rhetoric of Excluding Dissent
The passage addressing the argument for Princess Aiko’s succession is the most precarious part of this editorial. It states that raising the impossible prospect of Princess Aiko’s accession to promote “female emperor” discourse, thereby obstructing Prince Hisahito’s accession and the restoration of former imperial family members’ status, runs directly counter to the stability of the imperial succession — and that such argument should be recognized as having divided Japan and caused trouble for the Imperial Household.
Here there is neither a summary of the opposing argument nor any rebuttal of its reasoning — only the moral condemnation that it “divided Japan and caused trouble for the Imperial Household.” Even Western newspapers’ editorials, when taking a strongly partisan stance, maintain the form of summarizing the opposing argument before rebutting it. This form is not mere etiquette; it is a fundamental expression of respect inherent to the editorial genre — treating the reader as someone to be persuaded.
This editorial abandons that form. Rather than responding to dissent (the thought of response), it names and excludes the very subject who dissents, branding them as “one who divides” (the thought of control). This is, at the textual level, precisely the structure I have repeatedly pointed to throughout my series on the Imperial House Law debate.
4. The Intellectual Paralysis of the “That’s Just How Editorials Are” Defense
Against this critique, one could object that editorials are inherently a space for subjective assertion, and that this degree of argumentative roughness is simply par for the course. But this defense itself conceals the problem.
First, Sankei Shimbun is a national newspaper, and this editorial was positioned as a “summation of the debate” issued immediately after a legislative process concerning the foundations of national governance. Its social function is entirely different from that of a niche or coterie discourse space.
Second, the attitude of “well, that’s just what editorials are” is itself a self-fulfilling excuse that hollows out the editorial genre as a whole. If this standard is tacitly tolerated within the industry, that tolerance is itself the problem — not an exemption from it. Holding a position and failing to argue for that position are entirely different matters.
Third, precisely because this editorial addresses a subject — the imperial succession — that lies at the foundation of historical legitimacy in Japanese society, the structure of repeating the grounds for that legitimacy without proof should be understood not as mere negligence but as the very exposure of “the thought of control” operating on this subject. The more a subject demands open public debate, the higher — not lower — the quality of argumentation ought to be required.
Conclusion
This editorial, which unreflectively conflates procedural legitimacy (the “will of the legislature”) with an ungrounded essentialist assertion (patrilineal succession as “the most important principle”), serves — ironically — as an unusually clear illustration of the methodological fragility within the editorial culture of Japan’s major media.
Rather than responding to dissent, it excludes the very subject who dissents. This editorial is structured less like argument than like a manifesto or declaration addressed to an audience already in agreement. Read through the lens of “whole reading” (全体読み), such a text stands as a specimen demonstrating just how unreflectively — and how widely — “the thought of control” circulates within Japan’s public discourse space.
That a national newspaper’s editorial can address a subject at the very foundation of national governance at this level, and circulate without particular objection, must itself be called a symbol of the intellectual negligence of Japan’s editorial culture.