In a rare speech televised throughout Japan on Monday, August 8, 82-year-old Emperor Akihito spoke in length about his deteriorating health, which he said was increasingly preventing him from carrying out his constitutional duties.
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“I am anxious that it may become hard for me to carry out my duties as the symbol of the state with my whole being as I have done until now”, he said.
The Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, responding to the Emperor Akihito’s address suggested that his government had no problems changing the law.
In the pre-recorded message, Akihito will talk about his duties as a “symbol emperor” as stipulated by the constitution, palace officials said.
The 4 1/2-minute speech by Emperor Hirohito announcing Japan’s surrender in World War II has reverberated throughout the country’s modern history.
“Changing that will reflect the reality of Japanese society first of all, the way that nearly all people here feel about working and life and career building”, said Robert Campbell, a University of Tokyo professor and expert on Japanese history and culture.
The Swiss press at the time remarked that it would have been a welcome break for Naruhito, whose public appearances are normally highly controlled, involving little interaction with ordinary people.
In recent years, the emperor has suffered from declining health.
Although Akihito says he is now “in good health”, he was treated for prostate cancer in 2003 and underwent heart surgery in 2011. The first was after a massive natural disaster, deadly tsunami and nuclear crisis hit northeast Japan in March 2011.
“People both on the right and left would be cautious about making sure this process doesn’t weaken the institution and therefore open up the succession to political influence”, said Sheila A. Smith, a Japan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He said one possibility when an emperor could not fulfil his duties because of age or illness was that a regency could be established.
The emperor’s eldest son, 56-year-old Naruhito, is next in line to the throne and has already taken on some of his father’s duties.
It is written in law that the Emperor continues until death.
But Abe’s right-wing supporters are not in favor of letting Akihito abdicate, out of step with the majority of the Japanese public, who would support his decision. In order to carry out the duties of the Emperor as the symbol of the State and as a symbol of the unity of the people, the Emperor needs to seek from the people their understanding on the role of the symbol of the State.
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Current law, set in 1947, is largely inherited from a 19th-century constitution that banned abdication as a potential risk to political stability.
