Japan Govt Starts Work to Draft Imperial House Law Amendment

Tokyo, June 11 (Jiji Press)--The Japanese government has started work on drawing up a bill to revise the Imperial House Law, after the country's legislative branch compiled its consensus Wednesday on measures to secure a sufficient number of Imperial Family members.

The government will first report an outline of the planned bill to the leaders and deputy leaders of both chambers of the Diet, or parliament, and then give an explanation at a plenary meeting among political parties from both the ruling and opposition blocs.

It hopes to submit the legislation to the Diet late this month, aiming to secure its enactment during the ongoing parliamentary session ending July 17.

"We seriously take the parliament's consensus and will immediately start work to draft a bill (to amend the Imperial House Law)," Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, the government's top spokesman, told a press conference Thursday.

Yoshihiko Isozaki, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Diet affairs chief in the House of Councillors, the upper parliamentary chamber, told reporters the same day that the amendment may be submitted to the Diet in late June.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]