There are no more children in Japan’s imperial family, as Prince Hisahito, their youngest member, is now quite tall. Not quite as tall as his father, Prince Fumihito, but taller than his mother, Princess Kiko, by a few inches. The three of them recently faced the press photographers, so the public could see for themselves. And on Saturday at the entrance ceremony at Tokyo’s Tsukuba University High School, the nation heard the prince say the grown-up phrase in a raspy, cracked voice: “I want to study hard and deepen my knowledge of what interests me.”
The lanky 15-year-old in a dark suit is under constant surveillance as the nephew of Emperor Naruhito and second in line to the Japanese throne. For a few weeks now, allegations of plagiarism against Hisahito in an award-winning school essay about the trip to the Ogasawara Islands with his mother have caused initial irritation. In some cases there is a “great similarity with unnamed sources”. According to the specific accusation, Hisahito took second place in the Children’s Non-Fiction Prize of the City of Kitakyūshū with copied passages.
He is to ensure the continued existence of the Japanese monarchy: Prince Hisahito.
(Photo: Eugene Hoshiko/AFP)
Hisahito is not just any blue-blooded teenager in the world’s oldest monarchy, but is tasked with ensuring its continued existence. Women are not allowed on the chrysanthemum throne, so Naruhito’s 20-year-old daughter Aiko is out of the question, as are Hisahito’s two older sisters, Mako and Kako; Since her marriage to the commoner Kei Komuro, Mako no longer belongs to the imperial family anyway. If nothing happens to Hisahito, sooner or later he will be Japan’s emperor, the symbolic figure of the island state and the high priest of the national religion Shinto.
The country’s right-wing conservatives in particular believed in a gift from heaven when Princess Kiko gave birth to the long-awaited heir to the throne on September 6, 2006 at the age of almost 40. The Japanese imperial family now has only 17 members. At the end of December, a special government committee made two proposals against the extinction of the imperial family. According to this, princesses who marry a commoner should remain in the imperial family in the future and male relatives from separate branches of the imperial family tree can be adopted. But even if Parliament will probably wave the proposals through, they won’t change much. Because women are still not allowed to head the imperial family – and neither are adopted men. So Hisahito has to do it alone: not only become a Tenno one day, but also father at least one son.
The choice of his university also irritated the critics
One cannot have an unencumbered youth under such omens. Every decision is publicly evaluated – like his choice of a university. After the Second World War, all children of the imperial family attended the schools of the private aristocratic university of Gakushūin. Hisahito is the first descendant to choose a public high school. After attending kindergarten, elementary and middle school at Ochanomizu University in Bunkyo District, he entered an admissions program introduced in 2017 to elite high school at Tsukuba University in the same district. Successful, as reported by the Hofamt. But some media and netizens are speculating about an Emperor bonus – which in turn Tsukuba University dismisses.
Hisahito’s new school has a reputation for promoting free thinking, two skills that an emperor doesn’t really need under the strict laws of the court office. Do the critics think nothing of a self-thinking heir to the throne?
In any case, for them, the matter with the school essay is already an indication that the prince should rather not make free decisions. The Hofamt finally felt obliged to make a statement: Hisahito admitted that the sources were not precise enough. He was allowed to keep the prize. But the message of the affair was clear: the prince must grow up faster than others.