Is it a male heir ? - Princess Kiko expecting child

Priness Kiko in the right turned out to be pregnant this time. Note that the husband is a younger brother of the next emperor.



It is very good news for us. Princess Kiko turned out to be pregnant, expecting a child in September 2006 although we don't know it's a boy or a girl.

As you see in the diagram above, all the recent children are girl, so the child is the only one who can ascend the throne without changing the law unless it's a girl again.
Please see yahoo news for detail.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/ap_on_re_mi_ea/japan_imperial_succession_6

I made FAQ for those who are not clear about the situation surrounding the news.

Q. Why can't one of the girls ascend the throne?
A. The law banning this was made only 100 years ago, but it used to be just their untold rule that only males can do and they continued to inherit male's breed 125 times withoug exception.

Q. I heard that several women became an empress.
A. Yes, they allowed some women to reign, but those empress didn't marry or give birth to children. The important fact is that the current emperor can trace 2000 years back to the first emperor via only males.

Q. What did Prime Minister Koizumi did ?
A. He is a thorough realist. He formed a committee consisting of liberalists and made them announce that women need to take the throne to make the breed secured. However, it called a huge dispute, and he dropped his supporting rate by 5% just because of this. I think he was a bit hasty, but someone has to proceed.

Q. Isn't it a discrimination if you don't allow women to be heir?
A. The system of emperor is a discrimination per se. How do you decide the emperor between siblings? Choosing big brother or big sister is also a discrimination, isn't it? Japan's democracy let it exist, so it's not big a deal as long as more than half support this system. First of all, if the breed can date back along female's breed, we are willing to support all the empresses. But they lost the family tree for female's side.

Q. What kind of education is taking place in Japan? Do they have any curriculum in school to make pupils respectful to the imperial family?
A. No way. This is regarded as being a violation of freedom of religion. It's just because old people are still crazy about the family and Japanese history cannot exclude precedent emperors. Asahi newspaper, Japanese communism party, Social Democratic Party, and Komeito seem to be eager to abolish it, though.

Q. What is the family name of them?
A. They don't have their family name. ALL Japanese names consist of a family name and a given name such as "Ono Yoko". But there's only one exception. The imperial family doesn't have their family name such as "Hirohito" or "Akihito", and that's still one of their mysteries.

Giant Jellyfish and garbage

This must be a very nerve-wrecking phenomenon for fishermen. Vast number of giant jellyfish are recently found to appear in the north coast of Japan. Fishermen are suffered from clogging of fishnets by their heavy bodies ending up with little catch of fish.

BTW, the size of a normal adult reach 2.2 feets.(2m) Wow!


It seems that they drift over from East Chinese Sea. Researchers suspect the increase of the sea temperature is likely to cause this mass generation.
Actually I'm very concerned about those ecology problems between China and Japan. The problem of Yasukuni Shrine just keeps those true problems away from us.

Just because I'm antsy about the sea doesn't mean I'm paranoid. To be honest, we've been having so much troubles with them.

If the territory conflict for gas exploitation development in East China sea came across your mind, you gotta be very good at Asian politics. But it's not what I'm going to tell you this time.

Tsushima, an island through which the ocean current (Tsushima current) carries the giant jellyfish, has been getting a huge trouble about drifted garbages onto the shores. Most of the garbages are pastics, cans, and styrofoams. It's obvious they are from China and Korea because most of the containers are written in Chinese or Korean. It's a huge headache; no matter how they clean the shores, a week after they find so many garbages stacking again on the shore like this pic below. Not that all of them are from China and Korea. Of course some of them are from Japan itself. However, the expense to tidy up those things is not neglibitle, and China and Korea seem not to care about this because of their lack of morality. They are now just desperate thinking about their own economic growth. Increasing recognition about ecology needs to be gradually grown about this problem.