International
Japan to drop plan on female monarch http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?slug=Japan+to+drop+plan+on+female+monarch&id=98870
Associated Press
Wednesday, January 3, 2007 (Tokyo):
Japan will drop plans to change the law so that a woman could accede to the country's imperial throne, a news report said on Wednesday.
Until the arrival in September of Prince Hisahito, the emperor's first grandson, the royal family had produced no male heir in four decades.
It prompted a government panel to recommend allowing women on the throne to defuse a looming succession crisis.
But that reform drive, championed by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koziumi, lost steam after Hisahito's birth on September 6 to Prince Akishino's wife, Princess Kiko.
Koizumi's successor, Shinzo Abe, plans to ditch the panel's recommendations and instead debate other ways to make the imperial succession more stable, the conservative Sankei Shimbun reported, citing unnamed government officials.
Phones rang unanswered at the Cabinet office, which handles the Prime Minister's affairs, on Wednesday. Abe is on holiday and returns to duties on Thursday.
The conservative Prime Minister has repeatedly shown reluctance to change Japan's 1947 male-only imperial succession law to let an emperor's first child, boy or girl, to take the throne, as recommended by the expert panel in 2005.
Changing the law to allow a reining empress would have put Princess Aiko (5), the daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife, Masako, second in line to the throne, which traces its roots back 1,500 years.