Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne • Hacker News Board

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#91

Post by gkya » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:00 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #59

geuis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big difference though. The power of the Pope has been restricted over a period of centuries. The power of the Emperor of Japan has only been restricted for about 70 years. At this point, neither party can really "make decisions with consequence", especially the Pope. They can mutually make declarations, and people may or may not respond to them. In that regard, they are as equally weak as all of the variou…

> When I visited there in 2010, I left with a feeling that I visited a sleeping country/culture that was literally missing some polarizing goal to reignite it. Isn't this similar to the whole Western world? I mean, my impression of modern democracies I know is they're similar to headless chickens - running around without a point or a goal, but oh how fast they run. EDIT: to be clear, I'm not criticizing democracy her…

Plato's Politicus has an interesting comparison of different political systems in 302b-303c, putting democracy as basically ineffective, saying a corrupt democracy is the least harmful among corrupt systems, and a good, working democracy is the worst among good, working systems.

See the text, starting from: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plat.+Stat.+302...

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#92

Post by moogly » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:01 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #80

moogly wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I am cynical but are you sure they didn't vote against it because they like "traditions", pretty parades and hand-waving and think princes and princesses are quaint and fun and secretly in their hearts they wish they could be one? I do live in a 1000-year-old constitutional monarchy after all and that's the pro arguments I tend to hear. "Good for tourism" is another one.

Cynical you may be, but your case doesn't apply to Australia (I can understand your perspective though!). The Australian constitutional referendum was cleverly constructed to keep the monarchy. TWO republican options were offered in order to split the republican side, and both were engineered for short-term aggrandizement of politicians rather than give the country a sound constitution. So a "first, do no harm" strat…

Thanks for the info! Had no idea about this.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#93

Post by philovivero » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:02 AM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #67

ptaipale wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it so bizarre. The emergence of women to major political roles is a thing of the past 1-2 generations in almost all of the world (with the exception of some monarchs). (I guess it would be almost safe to count Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 93-96, as a monarch...)

> I don't find it so bizarre Women have made up 50% of the population of Homo Sapiens for the entire age of our species. Literally for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And it is literally in our lifetimes (give or take maybe 30 years) that the first woman is made the elected leader of a country? I wrote my reply with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, but when you get right down to it, it is phenomenall…

Le sigh. Here comes some greytext.

Is it so insanely improbable that, on the whole, men strive toward power and women don't? That there is some slim evidence that there is a gender difference, and women are happy not to be the number one dog everyone is looking to for guidance?

This seems to be the exact same argument as "women only get 70c on the dollar compared to men." Well, right, because men pick challenging jobs with hard hours that kill you, and women pick easier jobs with easier hours that don't kill you.

Being the President of the USA isn't a cakewalk, and those not driven by passion and a thirst for power won't end up there, which should be just fine, but for some reason... isn't.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#94

Post by gfodor » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:08 AM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #67

ptaipale wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it so bizarre. The emergence of women to major political roles is a thing of the past 1-2 generations in almost all of the world (with the exception of some monarchs). (I guess it would be almost safe to count Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 93-96, as a monarch...)

> I don't find it so bizarre Women have made up 50% of the population of Homo Sapiens for the entire age of our species. Literally for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And it is literally in our lifetimes (give or take maybe 30 years) that the first woman is made the elected leader of a country? I wrote my reply with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, but when you get right down to it, it is phenomenall…

Well, if you are conditioning on "elected" you have to consider that democracies are a relatively uncommon thing in history. If you further condition on democracies that the voting body isn't made up of land owning men it becomes even less surprising.

And of course if you remove the "elected" condition the whole phenomenon is quite unsurprising since power was often taken by force and men tend to use force to acquire power more than women.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#95

Post by Houshalter » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

kogepathic wrote: post #37

gfodor wrote: post #21

I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend to a completely powerless role while the US just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for president. edit: Wow, apparently this is an offensive comment. I'm having a hard time twisting my brain to see how, but my point was simply that the it seems odd that there would be contention over a powerless ro…

> while the US just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for president. And as someone who isn't from the US, I find it incredibly bizarre that you haven't had a female leader yet. The UK has had 2 female Prime Ministers (1979-1990, 2016-), Canada has had 1 (1993), and Germany (2005-) to name a few. > I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend…

> The UK has had 2 female Prime Ministers (1979-1990, 2016-), Canada has had 1 (1993), and Germany (2005-) to name a few.

> your country also looks comical from an outside perspective,

That difference is not statistically significant. If both the US and other_country have the same probability of electing a female leader, the results could easily be exactly the same. 1 female leader or 0 over 30 years, that's purely chance.

Especially given that there are many other countries to chose from to cherrypick positive results. To do it properly you need to average all countries as a comparison.

Lastly some countries don't elect leaders directly, but indirectly through votes by elected representatives. Which could maybe produce different outcomes than if the general population voted.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#96

Post by Houshalter » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:22 AM UTC

jboynyc wrote: post #83

kogepathic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while the US just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for president. And as someone who isn't from the US, I find it incredibly bizarre that you haven't had a female leader yet. The UK has had 2 female Prime Ministers (1979-1990, 2016-), Canada has had 1 (1993), and Germany (2005-) to name a few. > I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend…

Add to that that the current U.S. Senate has only 20 women members (i.e., 20 percent), which is the highest proportion in the history of the Senate . In the House of Representatives the proportion of women members is below 20 percent (19.4, to be exact), and that, too, is the highest proportion ever .

That doesn't seem bad at all. That may be roughly the same as the relative percentage of women that are interested in going into politics.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#97

Post by Camillo » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:22 AM UTC

pastProlog wrote: post #45

gioele wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In some countries, like Germany and Italy, the head of state is an elected president, usually an fairly elderly politician. In Italy the only people elected by the citizens are the members of the Parliament. The head of the state is elected by the members of the parliament every 7 years. The head of the government is chosen ("invested") by the head of the state after a round of consultations with representatives of…

> All this complicated dance of indirect elections (that the current parties would like to remove) has been put in place after the WW2 to avoid too much power being in the hands of these high-profile figures or of a single party. All of this was put in place after World War II to centralize power in the hands of the Christian Democrats, and force non-communist parties to go into coalition with them. As all prime mini…

> you have the 1948 elections which the communist/socialist coalition won but which was fixed the other way

The left-wing coalition (which was actually missing a piece of the socialists) didn't even get close to winning. It got 31% of the vote.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#98

Post by Hitard » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:29 AM UTC

moogly wrote: post #29

Hitard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason these nominal monarchies remain has nothing to do with the monarchs' unwillingness to let go, and everything to do with the useful diversion of royal celebrity. Oh, some of the european royals have said good things about the environment and peace and the need for civil society, and the japanese emperor notably rebuked the right wing for its jingoistic understanding of "patriotism" a few years back, but let…

I agree. The "deal" I speak of here is purely symbolic. However, I'm sure if you asked all the royalty across the world, I am certain that almost every single one of them wants to remain royalty and find the very institution quaint and traditional and wholesome. Do you think Akihito does not want his son to succeed him? If the monarch him-/herself suggests that maybe it's time we rethought the whole thing, I'm hopefu…

He indicated in his address that an elderly emperor can sometimes leave the society itself dangerously paralysed (an oblique reference to the pre-war period) and that the emperor "must always be with the people". It's actually a pretty powerful, if careful, statement from someone with no legal influence on the country. We can agree that he wants his son to succeed him (though "want" hardly comes into it) but I think the timing of this abdication has more to do with securing a path forward for the Japanese people. That's something the current political system has failed to do.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#99

Post by sspiff » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:30 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #38

sspiff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president of the united states is arguably also a powerless, symbolic role.

Really? Let's hear that "argument."

The argument generally goes that the president is beholden to enact the policies and direction that are set by the groups that funded his campaign and rise to power.

I'm not saying it's necessarily true, but it's definitely something many people believe to be true.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#100

Post by Houshalter » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:32 AM UTC

neximo64 wrote: post #90

Houshalter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that monarchies are The Worst is meme that has permeated Western culture. Because of a long history of fighting against them. I don't think they are the worst, but they definitely have problems. They tend to be very conservative. They tend to heavily favor the upper class. They tend to be more likely to start and maintain terrible wars. And the system encourages civil wars. And the lack of selection means th…

Is this true? Lots of Europe decided to keep their monarchies, as does Australia, NZ and Canada. This leaves out the US which is not solely the definition of 'Western Culture' Also they don't tend to favour the upper class there's broad support across ideologies and social class that support them. In fact, the republican movements tend to come from upper classes, well true in New Zealand and Australia anyway (not sur…

They keep them in symbolic roles only. They have no real power. And even then there are movements to abolish them for consuming public tax dollars. Not every country had a violent or sudden change to democracy. But supporters of democracy still won in the West. Despite massive resistance at first.

I mean that the monarchs themselves favor the upper class. They are, after all, members of it, and exposed mainly to their issues and their side of things. Europe has a terrible history of a ridiculously unequal and unfair aristocracy.