On July 17, 2026, Japan’s revised Imperial House Law was enacted. For the first time, it establishes in statutory form a system allowing male-line male descendants of the former collateral imperial branches (ky\u016b-miyake) to be adopted into the Imperial Family, with their descendants recognized as eligible for succession to the throne. Before addressing whether this reform is desirable, this essay focuses on one narrow but consequential point: how the relationship between Articles 1 and 2 of the Constitution of Japan was handled in the process of legitimizing this reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The conclusion, stated up front: the body of argument surrounding this reform \u2014 represented above all by constitutional scholar Akira Momochi \u2014 exhibits a consistent structural habit. It bypasses Article 1, the constitutional provision that grounds the whole framework, through a technical operation performed at Article 2<\/strong> (the delegation provision authorizing the Imperial House Law). This essay puts that question to the discipline of constitutional interpretation, directly and without euphemism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, the text itself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article 1: The Emperor shall be the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom sovereign power resides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article 2: The Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and succeeded to in accordance with the Imperial House Law passed by the Diet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the sequence and logical structure of these provisions, Article 2 presupposes Article 1. The legitimating ground for the Emperor’s status itself lies in Article 1’s “will of the people”; Article 2 is a delegation provision that entrusts the concrete mechanics of succession \u2014 who inherits, and how \u2014 to the Imperial House Law as enacted by the Diet. This dependency \u2014 Article 1 as the ground, Article 2 as the technical provision that specifies that ground \u2014 is not an idiosyncratic reading of mine. It reflects the standard understanding within constitutional scholarship: the entire framework of the symbolic emperor system is founded on Article 1, and the provisions on dynastic succession and political non-involvement that follow it (Articles 2 through 7) operate within that foundation. This structural understanding is widely confirmed as a point of scholarly consensus, including in materials from the Diet’s own constitutional research office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The real question is what happens once this dependency is granted: how should the word “will” (\u7dcf\u610f, s\u014di) itself be understood?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here lies the decisive interpretive fork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The one-time reading<\/strong> holds that the people’s “will” was fixed, once and for all, at the moment of the 1947 constitutional settlement \u2014 the political decision that both preserved the imperial institution and established the outline of dynastic succession. On this view, that will has since solidified; the specific content of the Imperial House Law from that point forward \u2014 who counts as a member of the Imperial Family, whether adoption is permitted, how succession order is determined \u2014 becomes a purely technical matter left to the Diet’s legislative discretion. The will was procured once, in the past; from then on, it is enough merely to follow procedure (a Diet resolution).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The continuing reading<\/strong> holds that the “will” in Article 1 is not something settled once at enactment and then finished, but a standing, ongoing ground that the imperial institution must continue to satisfy in order to retain legitimacy at any given moment. On this view, the specific provisions of the Imperial House Law remain open to having their legitimacy questioned if they substantially diverge from the actual national consensus of the time. A Diet resolution under Article 2 is not merely formal procedure; whether its content genuinely reflects the “will” of the people remains a live and recurring question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which of these two readings is correct is not, in fact, settled as a matter of doctrine. Constitutional scholarship has long contained both a view that treats dynastic succession itself as a kind of sanctuary \u2014 an exception carved out from the equality principle \u2014 and a view that treats the legitimacy of the imperial institution as something continually renewed in tension with the principle of popular sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This point can be examined through two commentaries issued side by side in June 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Akira Momochi<\/strong>, born in 1946, earned his doctorate in law from Kyoto University and served as a professor at Nihon University’s Faculty of Law (1994\u20132016), later becoming professor emeritus at Nihon University and a specially appointed professor at Kokushikan University. His specialty is constitutional law, and he has served as president of the Japan Association of Comparative Constitutional Law. At the same time, he has served as secretary-general of the Citizens’ Council on the Constitution (\u6c11\u9593\u61b2\u6cd5\u81e8\u8abf) and secretary-general of the “National Movement to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan,” and is known as a leading figure in conservative public discourse, having received the Seiron Award as a regular contributor to the Sankei Shimbun’s “Seiron” opinion column. On the question of imperial succession, he has consistently argued for maintaining the male-line dynasty and has actively supported the proposal to adopt former imperial-branch descendants back into the Imperial Family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Isao Tokoro<\/strong> is professor emeritus at Kyoto Sangyo University, specializing in the history of Japanese legal institutions. Known for his research on the historical development of the imperial system, Tokoro has consistently supported maintaining the male line in principle while expressing sustained caution about the adoption proposal as a means to that end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On June 11, 2026, Jiji Press published commentaries from both men on the same day, addressing measures to secure imperial family numbers. Momochi stated that “the adoption proposal from the former imperial branches has sufficiently reasonable grounds in light of the history and tradition of the Imperial Household, and is also appropriate as a matter of legislation.” Tokoro stated that “the proposal to adopt male-line male descendants of the former imperial branches is difficult to codify into law, and represents a ‘measure of last resort’ for maintaining the male line; the institutional design must proceed with caution” \u2014 explicitly citing the fact that the 2005 report of the Council of Experts Concerning the Imperial House Law had concluded that adopting such a proposal would be “extremely difficult,” and noting that “the descendants of the four families in question were born and raised as ordinary citizens, and it is doubtful whether national consensus can be obtained.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does this contrast read through the lens of the Article 1\/Article 2 relationship?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ground Momochi offers for legitimacy rests on the phrase “reasonable in light of the history and tradition of the Imperial Household.” This quietly relocates the legitimating basis of the imperial institution away from Article 1’s “will of the people” and onto the historical continuity of the imperial bloodline (k\u014dt\u014d) itself<\/strong>. It is worth pausing on the fact that “k\u014dt\u014d” is not a timeless, self-subsisting entity. The notion of unbroken male-line succession as a fundamental principle of the state was systematized and codified as law in the Meiji Imperial House Law of 1889; in that sense, “k\u014dt\u014d” is less an ancient, continuous given fact than an institutional concept constructed by the Meiji state for specific political purposes. To invoke it under the unmarked label of “history and tradition,” without disclosing this origin, is itself already an act of narrative manipulation. Once this substitution takes hold, Article 1 is processed as “a past event that once ratified this institution,” and what governs subsequent debate becomes a separate register altogether: “tradition.” The content of Article 2 \u2014 who may belong to the Imperial Family, whether adoption is permitted \u2014 is no longer something to be checked back against Article 1’s “will”; it becomes a matter determined by tradition as a self-contained yardstick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tokoro’s concern, by contrast, can be understood as issuing precisely from the continuing reading<\/strong>. He acknowledges that the difficulty identified in the 2005 report has not been resolved even now, and he keeps the adoption proposal positioned as a “measure of last resort” \u2014 not a desirable means in itself, but one accepted reluctantly for lack of alternatives. Here, an awareness that Article 2’s content must continually be checked back against Article 1’s will is clearly at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This structural habit is inscribed, finally, in the enacted statute itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article 38 of the revised Imperial House Law excludes the adopted person himself from Article 2 (which governs succession order), while applying Article 2 to his descendants “according to the lineage of the natal family” \u2014 a deft bifurcation. At the level of the adoptee himself, succession eligibility is denied, avoiding the appearance of discrimination by lineage (mongi, prohibited under the Constitution); at the level of his descendants, the bloodline of the former imperial branch is substantively reconnected to the line of succession. This split is precisely the device that renders unnecessary any structural check back from Article 2 to Article 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why? Because under this system, once the procedure \u2014 Diet deliberation and a resolution of the Imperial Household Council \u2014 has been followed, the procurement of legitimacy is treated as complete in itself. Nowhere in the statutory text is there an explanation of legislative fact addressing how this measure squares with Article 1’s “will of the people” \u2014 why these four families specifically, why adoption as the chosen mechanism, how it connects to present-day national consensus. The “reasons” section of the bill is limited to an enumeration of measures; the institution is finalized without the argument for its own legitimacy ever being made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This kind of drafting technique is not, in itself, unusual as a matter of legislative practice. Writing different applicable provisions for the adoptee and his descendants, so as to keep an undesirable interpretive consequence (conflict with the prohibition on discrimination by lineage) at arm’s length from the statute’s surface \u2014 this is a perfectly available choice from the standpoint of professional legislative drafting. But if one returns to the question of what a law is for in the first place \u2014 in the case of the Imperial House Law, the idea that a matter as fundamental to the state as imperial succession should be built into a legitimate institution reflecting the will of the people \u2014 this drafting choice looks less like work that substantively fulfills that idea, and more like technique-driven textual engineering<\/strong>: a way of using drafting craft to route around an undesirable interpretive outcome rather than confronting it. That something is technically sound as craft, and that it is justified in light of the law’s purpose, are two different questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point here is not that Momochi’s argument, or arguments like it, are simply wrong. The position that treats dynastic succession as a constitutionally sanctioned exception, leaving its content broadly to the Diet’s legislative discretion, is indeed one that genuinely exists within constitutional scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point, rather, is that the fact of having chosen that position is never once argued for explicitly<\/strong>. Momochi’s discourse proceeds without ever acknowledging that an interpretive dispute over the Article 1\/Article 2 relationship exists at all; it shifts the register of the debate onto “tradition” as though this were simply the one natural way to read the provisions. This is, at the most basic level of constitutional interpretation, an instance of exactly the pattern examined throughout this series: a “partial reading” that never passes through a “whole reading”<\/strong> \u2014 a mode of discourse that never places competing interpretive possibilities on the table for examination, and instead connects directly to a predetermined conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Momochi is not a private commentator; he is a professional researcher specializing in constitutional law, one who has held senior positions within the discipline itself, including the presidency of the Japan Association of Comparative Constitutional Law. Speaking as a professional researcher on constitutional interpretation, on a question where multiple readings genuinely coexist, making clear which position one is arguing from is a minimal requirement of scholarly integrity. To select a particular position while concealing that very act of selection, presenting it instead as though it were “simply the one natural reading,” amounts to a breach of the good faith a professional owes to readers and to the citizenry. Beyond this, given the sheer volume of specialist and general-audience books he has published \u2014 from academic monographs down to popular pamphlets \u2014 the fact that this basic point of interpretive clarification has never once been made explicit raises serious doubts about the reliability of his scholarly discourse as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as a genealogical chart can function as a device for stripping away the complexity of history in favor of a story of “inevitability,” the word “tradition” here functions as a medium of bypass \u2014 a way of fixing the content of Article 2 without ever routing it back through the reference point of Article 1. To call this legal reform a “culmination” would perhaps be too grand a description. It is, more modestly, one concrete result produced by drafting technique in service of a consistent goal: the maintenance of male-line succession. But that result was reached without ever substantively engaging Article 1 \u2014 the constitutional provision grounding popular sovereignty itself \u2014 and on that count alone, it is worth setting down on the record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. Introduction On July 17, 2026, Japan’s revised Imperial House Law was enacted. For the first time, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":592,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions\/592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.junkatanuma.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. The Logical Dependency of Article 2 on Article 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. Two Ways of Reading “the Will of the People”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. How Momochi’s Discourse Converges on the “One-Time Reading”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5. The Bypass Completed in Statutory Text<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
6. What This Means<\/h3>\n\n\n\n