The reduction of the Japanese Imperial Family during the American occupation

Following Japan’s surrender after the Second World War, there were calls for Emperor Hirohito to step down and be tried as a war criminal. Others feared unrest in Japan if this happened, and so a middle ground was sought. The Americans occupied Japan from its surrender on 2 September 1945 until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect on 28 April 1952.

Political manoeuvring ensued to prevent Emperor Hirohito from being implicated. Author and history John W. Dower wrote, “This successful campaign to absolve Hirohito of war responsibility knew no bounds. Hirohito was not merely presented as being innocent of any formal acts that might make him culpable to indictment as a war criminal, he was turned into an almost saintly figure who did not even bear moral responsibility for the war.”¹

On New Year’s Day 1946, Emperor Hirohito published a statement in which he repudiated any claim to divinity. It said, “The ties between us and our people have always stood upon mutual trust and affection. They do not depend on mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world.”²

With the Emperor no longer a divine being and merely a symbol of the state, more changes were to come. In 1947, a new Imperial House Law came into effect under the new mostly American-written³ Constitution.⁴

The new law drastically restricted membership of the Imperial Family. Only Emperor Hirohito’s immediate family, his wife, his two sons, his mother, and his three brothers, along with their families, remained. His four daughters were initially included, but once they married, they ceased to be Princesses and became commoners. Article 12 of the new Imperial House Law states, “In case a female of the Imperial Family marries a person other than the Emperor or the members of the Imperial Family, she shall lose the status of the Imperial Family member.”⁵

The eleven cadet branches (shinnōke and ōke) of the Imperial Family had 51 members who had to renounce their Imperial status. They were removed from the Imperial household register and became commoners on 14 October 1947.⁶ With the limitation that Princesses could only marry within the family, the family became smaller and smaller. The new law also upheld that only men could succeed to the throne.

Emperor Hirohito gathered all the imperial family members from the cadet branches to inform them that he would be forced to remove their imperial status. The new Constitution stated that all the property of the Imperial Household belonged to the state and so they no longer had the financial resources to support the cadet branches. Of these 51 family members, 26 had been men who were in the line of succession. The Prime Minister noted that there was no need for concern for the succession at the time. There were still six men in the line of succession.⁷

Out of the 51 family members, 40 received one-off payments. These payments were not for those with military records, and the total was ¥47.5 million. Several days later, the Emperor had a meal with those who were leaving the family, and he expressed his wish for ongoing warm ties.⁸

It was a great deal of change for the former members of the imperial family. Prince Fushimi, who was 15 years old and became plain Fushimi Hiroaki, later wrote, “We had to pay a huge, unprecedented amount of tax, and the one-off sum we received was decided unilaterally, and soon disappeared. So, the former imperial family members had to sell to live. My branch’s land became the Hotel New Otani, and that belonging to the Takeda-no-miya became the Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa. But some branches had lived on Ministry of the Imperial Household land. For example, the Kaya branch really struggled to get by.”⁹

The former Prince also wrote that others were inexperienced in business and thus lost their assets or became easy prey for criminals.

Princess Shigeko, the Emperor’s eldest daughter, would later tell a magazine that these hard times had “allowed her to find human happiness for the first time.”¹⁰ She was then known as Shigeko Higashikuni.

It wasn’t easy for those who remained in the Imperial family either. Setsuko, Princess Chichibu, who was the wife of one of the Emperor’s brothers and who had also attended the farewell meal, later wrote, “‘Let us always keep in touch,’ said the Emperor, raising his glass, and when in reply, the now former Prince Morimasa Nashimoto raised his, saying, ‘I pray for the continued prosperity of the Imperial family.’ I was choked with emotion, and at the same time, suddenly aware of the weight of responsibility now resting upon those few of us who officially remained imperial.”¹¹

Besides the shinnōke and ōke branches, the Japanese peerage (azoku) and the warrior families (shizoku) lost their status in October 1947.

1. Embracing defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II by John W. Dower p.326
2. The Chrysanthemum Throne by Peter Martin p.147
3. The Allied Occupation of Japan by Eiji Takemae p.159
4. New York Times
5. Imperial House Law
6. New York Times
7. Royal Reduction: The Postwar Downsizing of Japan’s Imperial Family
8. Royal Reduction: The Postwar Downsizing of Japan’s Imperial Family
9. Royal Reduction: The Postwar Downsizing of Japan’s Imperial Family
10. Royal Reduction: The Postwar Downsizing of Japan’s Imperial Family
11. The Silver Drum: A Japanese Imperial Memoir by Princess Chichibu p.177