Lower House Head Wants Imperial House Law Revision This Session

Tokyo, April 15 (Jiji Press)--Eisuke Mori, speaker of Japan's House of Representatives, said Wednesday that a bill to revise the Imperial House Law to secure a sufficient number of Imperial Family members should be enacted in the ongoing session of the Diet, the country's parliament.

In the first discussion among ruling and opposition parties on the issue in roughly a year, Mori said that he aims to promptly consolidate opinions from each party. He also urged the opposition Centrist Reform Alliance, which was founded in January, to formulate its stance on the matter within a month.

In the discussions so far, ruling and opposition parties considered two proposals presented by a government expert panel--allowing female Imperial Family members to remain in the family even after marriage, and adopting male members in the paternal line of former branches of the family back into the Imperial Family.

Most parties were in favor of the first plan, while the second was more contentious.

At Wednesday's meeting, 13 political parties and parliamentary groups from both Diet chambers presented their views, including the CRA and Team Mirai, which participated in the talks for the first time.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]