Imperial Household Law

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The Imperial Household Law of 1947(Koshitu Tempan) is a statute that governs the line of succession to the Chrysanthemum throne, the membership of the imperial family, and other matters pertaining to the administration of the Imperial Household. It was passed during the Showa era on January 16, 1947, by the last session of the Imperial Diet. This law superseded the Imperial Household Law of 1889, which had enjoyed co-equal status with the Constitution of the Empire of Japan and could only be amended by the emperor. The revised statute is clearly subordinate to the Constitution of Japan, which went into effect on May 3, 1947. It develops Chapter 1: Article 2 of The Constitution of Japan which states: "The Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and succeeded to in accordance with the Imperial House Law passed by the Diet" ^[1].

Hastily drafted by the government of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru during the American occupation, the 1947 statute sought to bring the legislation governing the Imperial Household into compliance with the American-written Constitution. The law had the effect of dramatically restricting membership in the imperial family to the Emperor Hirohito's immediate family, his widowed mother, and the families of his three brothers. It abolished the collateral lines of the imperial family, the shinnoke and the oke, which had traditionally a pool of potential successors to the throne if the main imperial family failed to produce an heir. (The fifty-one members of the eleven cadet branches were formally removed from the imperial household register and become ordinary citizens on October 14, 1947.) The new law retained the principle of agnatic succession enshirned in the 1889 law and the Meiji Constitution, but further restricted the succession to legitimate-born sons, grandsons, and male line descendants of an emperor. Previously, an emperor's sons and grandsons born by concubines and their male line descendants could succeed to the throne. Finally, the law contained numerous mechanisms to regulate the future size of the imperial family (and thus the financial burden on the state).

The chapters of the Imperial Household Law address the following:

The order of succession to the throne;
The establishment of a regency should the emperor be a minor or suffer from a serious ailment
The membership of the imperial family
The composition of the Imperial Household Council
The titles and styles held by the emperor and members of the imperial family
The marriages of the emperor, the crown prince, and the princes of the blood; and,
The rites for imperial funerals, imperial mausoleua, and the maintenance of the imperial family registry.

Chapter 1: Article 1 of the Imperial Household Law states: "The Imperial Throne of Japan shall be succeeded to by legitimate male descendants in the male line of Imperial Ancestors" ^[2]. The line of succession is detailed in Article 2 as: