Female succession on back burner

TOKYO, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The Japanese official expected to become the next prime minister dropped a plan to change the succession law even before this week's birth of a male heir.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe told colleagues that proposed changes to the Imperial House Law would go on the "back burner," Mainichi Shimbun reports. Abe opposes allowing female succession.

Before Princess Kiko, wife of the emperor's younger son, gave birth to a boy this week, all of Emperor Akihito's grandchildren were girls. That raised the possibility of ending a line of succession to the Chrysanthemum Throne that goes back centuries.

Conservatives were less upset by the notion that Princess Aiko might eventually succeed her father, Crown Prince Naruhito, than by the possibility that her children would inherit. Japan has had a few reigning empresses, but all were succeeded by male relatives from the paternal line.