IN THIS CHAPTER I want to put together my thoughts on Japanese politics and the political system, focusing on the underlying factors driving or inhibiting change. I have chosen a title for the chapter suggesting the possibility of prediction, in the full knowledge that in matters of politics, prediction is a dangerous exercise.

As I write this, the thirty-year reign of the Heisei Emperor (Akihito) has just ended with his retirement, and a new Emperor (Naruhito), whose era name is Reiwa, has ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne. It used to be thought that Popes in Rome and Emperors of Japan did not retire, but now one of each has done so, not without controversy in both cases.

According to the 1947 Constitution, Article 1:

Articles 3 and 4 read as follows:

The notion of a ‘symbolic’ Emperor has put down roots in Japan since 1947, even though substantial elements of the far right dislike it. But this does not mean that the Emperor is insignificant. Symbols are important in politics, and even though the Emperor's formal acts are confined to ceremonial activities, what the Emperor says and does – and more importantly, perhaps, what the Emperor does not say and do, can have significant implications for politics. The most famous example of such deliberate non-action has been the decision of the Shōwa Emperor (Hirohito) in 1978, followed consistently by his son the Heisei Emperor throughout the thirty years of his reign, not to pay homage to the war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

The Yasukuni Shrine was established in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, originally to commemorate the dead of the wars that followed that transition, but later to recognise the Japanese dead of later wars (of which there were many up to 1945).