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Astana, May 3 (360info) On a rainy autumn morning in 2019, Emperor Naruhito proclaimed his enthronement of the mythical sun goddess Amaterasu inside the Japanese Imperial Palace.
Later, he stood among the pine trees, the most prestigious space in the palace, and ascended the chrysanthemum throne.
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Dignitaries and royals from around the world travel to witness the coronation of the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy.
These include Britain’s monarch, Charles III, who will be formally crowned at a three-day event this weekend.
The emperor’s younger brother, Crown Prince Akishino, will attend his ceremony as the representative of the Japanese monarchy.
Japan and the United Kingdom have constitutional monarchies where the monarch is the ceremonial head. In democratically elected governments, power rests in the constitution, and the monarchy in these systems exists as a symbolic figure to unify its people.
Although constitutional monarchies hold no formal political power in democracies, research has found that they can influence public opinion through their prestige.
The Emperor of Japan was a powerful political and religious leader until Japan’s defeat in World War II and the new democratic constitution strictly limited his role to a symbolic and ceremonial rather than political one.
Since then, the emperor has been strictly prohibited from expressing political messages, and he has not even had the right to vote.
But a nationally representative survey in 2018 found that more than 75 percent of the Japanese public still hold goodwill and respect for the emperor.
0% of the respondents said they did not have a good impression of the emperor, and 22% answered that they had “no feeling” for him.
A 2020 survey of 1,527 people showed that Japan’s emperor can still influence people’s views on the country’s politics.
While the impact may be modest, the results of a study by researchers at Japan’s Waseda University and Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University suggest that his influence can cut across ideologies, influencing people regardless of their political beliefs.
Free speech in Japan can be divided between the left (for example, the regulation of hate speech) and the right (for example, the regulation of publicly funded anti-nationalist exhibitions).
The study asks how people perceive the regulation of public expression in two distinct settings.
Among them, their ideas for regulating public hate speech against foreigners generally enjoy higher support among left-wing publics.
Separately, right-wing politicians are typical supporters of the regulation of public art exhibitions that negatively portray Japanese culture and history.
The researchers were randomly asked what they thought of the growing number of ethnically or racially discriminatory speech or actions against foreigners (hate speech) or art exhibitions that negatively portray Japanese culture and history at publicly administered museums and events.
After answering, respondents were shown a quote from a speech by former Emperor Akihito, in which he said it was important to ensure freedom of expression, which is the foundation of democracy.
When asked the original question again, the researchers found that Japanese people reduced their support for regulating speech in public places, consistent with the former emperor’s view.
The implications of the evidence are still up for debate, with insufficient research on how and when this effect increases or decreases.
We might worry that non-elected hereditary figures might have political influence, or that the emperor’s cross-cutting influence meant he could play a role in moderating ideological divisions in democracies.
At the very least, we should stop assuming that the monarch has no real political power in a democracy.
Susumu Annaka is an Assistant Professor at Hirosaki University, Japan. He was a student at Waseda University when the original article was published. His articles have appeared in World Development and other reference journals. His research for this article was funded by JSPS KAKENHI.
Gento Kato is an Assistant Professor at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. His work is in the areas of political behavior, formal modeling, and quantitative methodology.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. (360info.org)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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