Changing of Status and Roles of Japanese Emperors which Effected to the Abdication in Japanese History
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Abstract
The Yamato dynasty is the only dynasty in the world whose reign has continued to the present day. One of its traditions is that abdication is done while the emperor is still alive, and have been 64 of Yamato emperors have abdicated the throne. At the beginning of the Yamato dynasty, the emperor acted as the commander-in-chief and the ritual leader as the descendant of the goddess Amaterasu. In early years, since Empress Jito’s reign, abdication was done to preserve the dynasty. Governmental changes through different periods with different leaders rising to power, had an effect on the abdications, for instance, to maintain the power of the Fujiwara nobles during the Heian period, Joko in the late Heian period or the military government from the Kamakura to Edo periods. All of these had the purpose of maintaining authority of the nobles and the military, thus limiting the emperor’s status to the country’s ritual leader, the descendant of the Goddess, praying for peace, and not the ruler. Moreover, the tradition of crowning emperors of age less than 15 shows that the emperors was merely a ‘symbol’, having no governmental influence from the Heian to late Edo periods. In the Meiji period, the modern government restored the image of the commander-in-chief and the ritual leader to the emperor, and the constitution prohibited abdication as previously practiced. After World War II, the constitution did not specify that the emperor could abdicate the throne and delegated the emperor the role of the country’s “symbol.” Abdication in the Heisei period was done to ensure the integrity of the mission as the country’s symbol. Emperors had no governmental power since the Heian period and, often, they abdicated the throne at the will of the powerful at the time, which became the tradition of practice, and their role was limited to the leader of rituals associated with the goddess Amaterasu, as the representative of the dynasty, resulting in the Yamato’s dynasty long reign until the present day.
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