A revised Imperial House Law took effect on October 24, allowing female members of the imperial family to remain in the palace after marriage and letting male-line men from former branch houses enter the family through adoption. For princesses, though, the law creates a family in which husband and wife, and parent and child, hold different status.
Takamori Akinori, a scholar of Shinto and a researcher of the imperial family, argues that the arrangement singles out imperial princesses and queens — 内親王 (naishinnō) and 女王 (joō) — for treatment he calls "rude and inhumane." He described it as a penalty attached to marriage in a contribution to the President Online website.
Princess Aiko, the elder daughter of Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako, is widely expected to stay in the imperial family after she marries, given her public duties and her parents' remarks. The law makes that possible. It does not make her husband a member of the family.
A family split by status
Since the modern era, members of an imperial household have held the same status as one another: all imperial, or all commoners, apart from international marriages. The revised law breaks that principle for princesses alone, Takamori wrote.
“For the people concerned, isn't this a mechanism that is rude and inhumane, like a penalty on marriage?”Takamori Akinori, scholar of Shinto and the imperial family
He warned the arrangement could itself become an obstacle to marriage for princesses.
A wedding with the groom outside the room
Weddings for male members of the imperial family are held at the three palace sanctuaries in the Imperial Palace grounds: the Kashikodokoro, the Kōreiden and the Shin-den. Emperor Taishō set the precedent in 1900, when he married Kujō Sadako, later Empress Teimei, while still crown prince.
The ceremony, held before the gods, drew public admiration and helped spread Shinto-style weddings among ordinary Japanese, Takamori wrote, making the palace rite the origin of the practice.
Under the new rules, a princess's husband remains a commoner. Only the emperor, imperial family members and the priests who conduct rites may enter the inner sanctuary. The groom would therefore be shut out of his own wedding ceremony.
An official at the Imperial Household Agency told the Yomiuri Shimbun in its October 24 edition that a couple facing a ceremony apart poses a problem and that an exception should be allowed, according to the report. Takamori cautioned that once an exception is granted it may spread, since the inner sanctuary is the most sacred of sacred spaces.