[Reuters]
[Reuters]

Japan is once again debating whether to punish those who criticize the emperor and the imperial family.

According to the Mainichi Shimbun and the Nikkei on Friday, a conservative Liberal Democratic Party caucus called the "Group to Protect Japan's Dignity and National Interests" established a "royal family protection project team" last month. With 107 members, it is one of the largest intraparty caucuses in the LDP.

Under revisions to the Imperial House Law enacted last month, men in the male line of the 11 former imperial branches that left the palace in 1947 may now be adopted into the imperial family.

As the path opened for certain men to become members of the imperial family, a wave of online criticism targeting them prompted caucus leader Aoyama Shigeharu, a member of the House of Representatives, to say that "it is the legislature's responsibility to work with the government to examine concrete protective measures," adding that "legislative action may be necessary."

The approach under discussion would amend the existing defamation and insult laws. Currently, prosecution requires a complaint from the victim — a so-called victim-initiated offense — but proposals are being debated that would allow investigation and indictment without such a complaint when a member of the imperial family is the victim.

Aoyama denied that the move amounts to reviving the lèse-majesté offense, but Sonoda Hisashi, an emeritus professor at Konan University's law school, said that "even if one denies it is a revival of lèse-majesté, functionally it is exactly the same movement," calling it "in effect lèse-majesté itself."

The lèse-majesté provisions that once existed in Japan's Penal Code — Articles 73 through 76 — punished acts of insulting or harming the emperor or members of the imperial family. The provisions drew criticism for their vague definition of what constituted an act of disrespect, which allowed for arbitrary enforcement and made them a tool for controlling thought and speech. They were abolished in the 1947 revision of the Penal Code.


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