Japan's Imperial Succession Crisis

The economist Hello and welcome to the Intelligence From the Economist. I'm Rosie Blw. And I'm Jason Paaler Today on the show, a whopa El Nino, and why Japan's popular princess will never take the throne First up though It's been four days since peace talks between America and Iran began These came after the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding last week In theory, the deal ends the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and freezes Iranian assets and begins a sixty day period of negotiations over the future of Iran's uranium stockpile Des Iran's insistence, it also includes a commitment to a ceasefire in Lebanon Between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iran backed Shia militia The question now is whether that conflict could undermine the prospects of long term peace in the Middle East The village of Majdal Zun seven kilometers north of Israel's border with Lebanon is deserted Antil Fefer is our Israel correspondent It's a Shia village has been empty now for a while. and even though it was very dark there you could see that many of the buildings have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes There's no electricity, but there was light in the Israeli command post and in the underground location where we were taken I'm sure you say you were taken to an underground location, just explain what it is that you saw where you went R about thirty meters under the center of the village There's this long and very wide tunnel which from what we were shown there was used as a factory or an assembly line building killer drones. I've been in quite a few tunnels over the last two and a half years under Lebanon and under the Gaza Strip. I think this was cly the widest M well constructed tunnel I've seen in these wars so far And from what we were shown there, just the piles and piles of dozens of sets of triangular wings, long cigar shaped fuselages and cylindrical explosive charges. It was clear that this place was being used to assemble kits of drones, dozens and dozens of them which were then to be launched from rails in other parts of the village towards Israel. according to Israeli intelligence back in twenty four some of these drones hit Israeli bases killing soldiers and also hit Beenamin in Ten hs seaside Viller as well Anchl, as you say, you've been in a number of tunnels over the years, you've been on a number of Mbeds over the years with Israel defense forces What's it like to be embedded with them and embent with the idea if using something that you're there couple of hours from your home or office and spend a few hours out in the field. and then you're back again. So it's something very short. you come, you meet the unit. there's the issue of the convoy and most of the convoys into the battlefields of Gaza or South Lebanon are relatively short, about twenty or thirty minutes. And you're in that's sort of a tense moment when you're driving on rather unsecured roads. and usually they want to show you something. There obviously a PR or propaganda purpose for these viss. In this case, they wanted to show this drone factory that they had discovered. a few days earlier to make the point that Heizbollah with Iran's support still has a very significant military presence in southern Lebanon which is a point that Israel's been trying to make against the ceasefire that Donald Trump and the Iranians have been trying to impose an Israel in Lebanon So Israel's keen to show that its campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah is justified. How does that play into apparent plans for peace in the Middle East? So the backdrop to everything that has been happening in Lebanon and to our embed there is the talks that would you to stop twenty four hours after our visit to Lebanon in the Switzerland, the Tin Iran and America reaching a longer lasting ceasefire. And Lebanon is in a way a sideshow to this but for Israelis and for Lebanon, it's very much an immediate conflict and Israel went into Lebanon back in March after Hezbollah began firing rockets in support of foreign solidarity with Iran after the war began And ever since this war has been rumbling on And when the Americans and the Iranians reached a deal a week ago, one of the clauses of the memorandum of undernderstanding was also a ceasefire in Lebanon. Now Israel was America's partner in the war, but it wasn't part of the negotiations. So they had this ceasefire foisted on them. And the point that they're trying to make now is that there is a real conflict going on in Lebanon with Hezbollah. That's still retaining these significant military capabilities to attack Israel, and Israel now has had its hands tied by its American ally. So is a ceasefire in Lebanon possible or feasible The ceasefower is held for the most part now for two or three days. There was one incident on Tuesday when two Lebanese were killed. It's obviously a very tense affair and it's hard to see it lasting for long and it wouldn't be existing now if it wasn't for a very intense American pressure on Israel. And why does Netanyahu not want a peace deal? Well, I think in this case it's not just Netanyahu. I think in this case, it's the entire Israeli defefense establishment They're seeing Heizbollah rebuilding its military capabilities in South Lebanon close to the Israeli border. they're seeing the drones being used And from their perspective, there isn't currently a diplomatic or a political arrangement that can deal with this, Lebanese government may be willing to disarm Heizbollah at some point, but it doesn't have the capability to do so right now. Initially, Israel and America launched the conflict against Iran together, very much united How has this difference of opinion over Lebanon affected that relationship But it has soured the relationship to a great degree and we're seeing all these interviews that Donald Trump has been making and also his Deputy JD Vance where Israel has gone from being this trusted and close allies now is being portrayed as this unruly child which needs to be chased and put in its place. Donald J. Trump. is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world That's a very abrupt reversal of Israel's role in this and Most importantly, from an Israeli perspective, they've lost control of the event. whatever it does is immediately reported by Iran and Iran says, this is something which is endangering The cease fire, we won't turn up for the next round of talks because of Israel raing the case far in Lebanon. And Israel doesn't really have a say in this. And this from Israel's strategic perspective is a huge blow. Andil, I think every discussion we ever have ends this way. But where does this all leave prospects for peace in the wider region in the Middle East? Well, there are talks ongoing between America and Iran and in Washington, there are talks between the Israeli and Lebanese governments about finding a solution to the situation. But right now from being there on the ground, I don't think that this is going to solve problem of Hezbollah and Israel. in Lebanon and It very much looks like this could be the trigger for another Middle Eastern war when Israel and H hasback just can't stop fighting against each other there Anul, thank you very much Thanks for having me Rosie You know the climate phenomenon called El Nino centuries in Peru noticed that every few years, the anchovies they were fishing for in the Pacific just disappeared It happened around Christmas time, so the fishermen named the event after Jesus in Spanish El Nino, the Christ Child. These days, it's become common global parlance Meteorological shorthand for Things are going to be even more out of whack than usual this season El Nino is ultimately driven by a shift in the winds that blow above the equatorial Pacific Treen Broke is our envirment edit That shift in the wind causes a shift in the water underneath and the net effect is that you end up with this pool of warmer water in the surface of the Pacific over the equator on june eleventh this year The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is an arm of the American government, announced that that switch had been flipped. So we are now officially in an El Nino event There are a lot of indications to suggest that this El Nino is going to be a whopper So when you say it could be a whopper, I mean, how is this measured El Ninho' a vast band that is artificially defined in the middle of the Equatoria Pacific. If the average surface temperature goes above zero point five higher than a historical average, then that signals an El Nino year The degree to which it rises abovezo point five is then a measurement of how strong the event is going to be and the stronger the event, the stronger the impacts So an event that is two degrees warmer than the historical average is considered a strong event. We've seen this a few times. The current record holder was in nineteen eighty two, nineteen eighty three when that Nino index rose by two and a half degrees. There was also a really strong event in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen Currently, modelers are anticipating that the event that's starting this year that will run into next year will be comparable to these two big events that I just mentioned. the temperatures could rise to around two and a half degrees above the historical average. It could even, according to some models, rise in the range of three degrees C. If it were in that range, then it would be unprecedented in seventy five years of tracking these things So you said this starts, essentially as a migration of waters. What's the rest of the mechanism? What happens after that and elsewhere So the size of the Pacific, the sheer mass of that water basasically means that these impacts don't just stay in the Pacific. you end up having a vast redistribution of heat and moisture that ripples out across the entire planet Its effects are most felt in the tropics, but they can ripple out beyond. The most noticeable effect is that the world gets hotter. So during El Ninho years, typically you see global average temperatures go up a notch and the stronger the El Ninho event, the greater the global warming signature. So typically what you see in El Nino years globally hot years. It's important to note that this is a natural climate cycle. So it's something that has always happened. At the minute, of course, and in recent decades, it's been layered on top of global warming. Right now, it's layered on top of accelerated global warming. So you've got a natural climate event That typically means the world runs hotter than average during those years. And that's happening on top of global warming, which is also pushing temperatures up. So you're probably going to see some records broken in the next twelve months. So that's the global average picture though, but what does it look like region by region, country by country The impacts are most felt across the tropics Southern Africa, the Sahel, Central America, Oceania They do ripple out to Europe and North America, for instance, but those impacts tend to be milder and more variable. It's also worth noting that some regions feel some very severe impacts of El Nino and other regions might benefit. So you get different rainfall patterns. In some places that means drought. In other places, it might mean extra rain, which can be good for crops or a glut of rain, which can be floods and actually destructive to crops. You can look at patterns in history. So for instance, in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen which was a relatively mild El Nino event, helped to fuel some of the worst fires in Australia's history. In twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, which was a very strong event You saw an estimated sixty million people worldwide who were short of food and needed food assistance. There were huge outbreaks of Zika in South America. You get these disease outbreaks because different weather patterns and different rain patterns change the distribution of disease vectors, mosquitoes, other insects, et cetera. economic costs and benefits of E Nino years are kind of in the balance. You get these benefits from some crops, for instance, and some commodities might get a boost and others not. And so we've seen in recent decades some studies suggesting that on balance there is no impact to global GDP in an El Nino year, and then some papers that suggest that there are deccreases in global GDP on the order of several trillion dollars. That all sounds extremely uncertain in a whole bunch of ways. What if anything, can we say concretely about what is likely to happen during this particularly nasty El Nina We know this is going to be almost certainly a very strong event. Some people are calling it a Godzilla El Nino. And so we should absolutely be anticipating very strong impacts. The warnings that are going out at the minute from places like the UN Food and Agricultural Organization are particularly about the food impacts. And part of the reason for this is because a lot of poooreor regions in the global South are already suffering from food insecurity as a result, for instance, of the fertilizer shortage, which is a knock on effect of the war in Iran and the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. And then there's conflicts around the world which have already put a lot of people in very insecure situations So El Ninho is piling on top of that, and that's why a lot of these big international organizations are extremely concerned about what will happen as a result of this El Ninho. So what's to be done in the way of preparation for all that then The advantage, if I can call it that of El Nino, is that we do have these regional patterns of impacts. You kind of know which regions typically are at risk of drought, which regions typically are at risk of floods and excessive rain. And so that means that you can do some things to prepare. things like regions where drought should be anticipated can distribute drought tolerant seeds to their farmers. You can do things like store fodder for your livestock, store water for your livestock, and for your people. There are measures that governments and agencies can deploy and almost certainly are. Of course, to some effect, that preparation is tragically stymied by things like the global decreases in aid budgets Grim prospects. Thankks very much for your time, Katrine Thank you, Jason year when Emperor Narjhito and the royal family stepped onto a balcony at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo They were met by tens of thousands of visitors Waving Japanese flags and cheering But it was Aiko or Princess Toshi who made the crowd swoon. Moka Ida is an East Asia reporter for the economist Some people in the crowd shouted her name, and they were holding fans with a name written on them, like you would see at a concert of a pop idol Of course now twenty four years old and she's one of Japan's most beloved royals She's also the emperor's only child, but despite her popularity, Aikor can never inherit the throne Succession is restricted to men and only pass through the male line That's becoming an existential problem for Japan's imperial family. which is the oldest hereditary dynasty in the world Moka, you say it's an existential problem. You mean the royal family is in danger of not existing? Yes, exactly. Just like the rest of the country, which is aggeing and shrinking, Japan's royal family is also running out of people The Japanese royals have seen a number of girls being born in recent decades, but They've had a shortage of men and there's only three people in line to succession. Realistically, if you consider their age, Prince Hisahito, who is the nineteen year old nephew of the emperor, is the only realistic one. unless they tweak the rules and allow women to be emperor So A lot of people find the current rules archaic and that it should open up to women taking over the throne as well. And this is a topic that the government has been talking about. But conservatives are very resistant and they also have a large sway on policy making. Well that's f enough, and we've talked about this a lot on the show. I know that Japan doesn't rank very well on our glass ceiling index, but there is a sense of change. Japan now has its first female prime Minister, for example. Yes, exactly. Japan has seen a major glass ceiling being broke. so Takaichi Sanay became the country's first female prime minister last year. and that is a really big deal. But the irony is that she is a staunch social conservative and she is very protective about traditional values She opposed to female emperors, she's also opposed to things like allowing married couples in Japan to use different surnames, which is a big feminist topic. I do think the current rules are increasingly out of step with where the general public stands. In fact, if you look at the polls, ninety percent of people support the idea of having a female emperor And that ties into the popularity that you say ICO already has I think society is more open to the idea of women taking a bigger role, but also ICO's personal popularity has helped encourage people to open up to the idea as well. So there's something about ICOR that has wn people's admiration eople who are fans of IiCor says, this's quiet race about her. She's calm, she's thoughtful, there's this natural warmth about her. There's even a comic book series that calls for ICor to become emperor. and I've also spoken to a number of activist groups who support the idea. But it doesn't sound as if all of that public adulation is going to translate into real change the way you're talking No, no, unfortunately not. But , something did chang. So Japan's political parties approved a proposal to amend the imperial House law. and there are two parts to this. One is allowing female royals to remain in the family after marriage. and the second part of the reforms are more contentious. Just to step back and explain the context, after the Second World War, the Japanese royal family was significantly downsized A lot of the imperial family branches were stripped of their royal status and they have been living as commoners since for the past eight decades. They desperately want to avoid a situation when women take over the throne. So they're saying that we can look at these deryaled family members and recruit men from them and bring them into the royal family ex and the number of men that we currently have This is a very controversial idea because from a Japanese public perspective, these people are basically strangers to the royal family. They say instead of going all the way to do such things, why don't we just let women have the opportunity? Why don't we let Iic or women take over the throne as well But for now, that's something that remains very sensitive and it's very difficult to see that happen Thanks very much for joining us Mica. Thank you so much for having me, Jason. That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. See you back here tomorrow