Queens and Empresses: When Women Ruled Japan ~ by Lesley Downer

‘Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming of age ceremony.’
Prince Hisahito, September 6th 2025

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako of Japan

On Prince Hisahito’s 19th birthday, September 6th 2025, there was an elaborate coming of age ceremony at the imperial palace in Tokyo. The prince wore the Kakan-no-Gi, the traditional golden yellow garment with a long train to mark him as a youth, and was presented with a black silk and lacquer crown by deferential courtiers in rustling black robes, recognising him as second in line to the throne after his father, the Crown Prince.

He then changed into the black robes of adulthood and set off to the next ceremonial event in a horse-drawn carriage.

Princess Aiko, December 23 2022 

Prince Hisahito is the nephew of the Emperor of Japan; his father is the emperor’s younger brother. His cousin Princess Aiko is the only child of the Emperor and Empress and, at 23, is older than him. So how does Prince Hisahito come to be second in line to the throne?  

Princess Aiko can’t accede to the chrysanthemum throne for one simple reason: she is a woman.

This is not ancient tradition. Until the passing of Japan’s first constitution in 1889 there was no such rule. The aim of the constitution was to make Japan appear similar to western nations, on the surface at least, so as to end the unequal treaties which forced Japan to kowtow to the west - though ironically at the time Queen Victoria was firmly on the throne in Britain.

After the war the American occupying forces drew up a new constitution which set in stone the law that only men could accede to the throne. Empress Masako, the present Empress, was under great pressure to produce a son and didn’t succeed, though she did have a daughter, Princess Aiko.

But before that first constitution things were different. Female emperors were not common but there were some who played major roles in the development of Japan. And in ancient times there were plenty.

The Sun Goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami
by Utagawa Kunisada 1856

In fact the claim to legitimacy of the imperial family is - again, ironically - that they are descended in an unbroken line from the female Sun Goddess, Amaterasu.

Queens and Empresses part I

Shaman Queen

The very first named person in Japanese history is a woman - Queen Himiko, who ruled from about 190 to 248 AD, just over a hundred years after Boudicca. At the time the kings who ruled the various kingdoms that made up Japan were always fighting and in order to maintain the peace decided to set a woman on the throne.

Himiko, who came from a line of queens, maintained peace for 60 years. She was not only a temporal ruler but a shaman who could intervene with the gods to ensure the food supply and protect her people from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. After her death a king took the throne and fighting started again. Peace was only restored when Himiko’s 13 year old niece Iyo, who was also a shaman, became queen.

In the years that followed there was a succession of empresses, six in all.

Suiko: Long reigning empress who established Buddhism

Empress Suiko: imaginary picture
by Tosa Mitsuyoshi (1700 - 1772)

Empress Suiko (554 - 628) came to the throne in 593, succeeding her husband, Emperor Bidatsu, and ruled for 35 years. Like Himiko she was installed on the throne in order to establish peace among warring factions, the Soga and the Mononobe clans. Her father, Emperor Kinmei, had been given a statue of the Buddha by the King of Baekje, now part of Korea, who urged him to adopt this ‘most excellent’ religion.

Under Suiko’s rule Buddhism was recognised as the official religion of the country and the country absorbed a great deal of Chinese culture - politics, poetry, laws, religion, food, clothing, architecture and music. Chinese and Korean craftsmen came to Japan. Her government sent its first official embassy to the glorious Chinese court, introduced the Chinese calendar, replaced the Japanese system of hereditary ranks with the Chinese bureaucratic system and established the supremacy of the emperor, laying the foundations for Japan as a unified country rather than a collection of warring states.

Empress Kōgyoku witnesses a spectacular coup d’état.

Empress Kōgyoku

Empress Kōgyoku (594 - 661) had a rather dramatic story. She was the widow of the previous emperor, Suiko’s great-nephew. She came to the throne in 642 and had a new palace built, the Itabuki no Miya. In those days people founded a new capital every time a new emperor came to the throne so as to avoid being jinxed by the ghost of the previous incumbent. She then brought an end to a drought by praying.

But she’d barely settled into her new palace when there was an upheaval. Her son Prince Naka was tired of the Soga clan controlling power. He started meeting with a nobleman called Nakatomi no Kamatari in a wisteria grove where they claimed to be studying Chinese texts but in fact were plotting a coup d’état.

On July 13 645 there was a grand meeting at the new palace. Prince Naka ordered all the gates to be locked, smuggled in a sword and in full view of everyone lopped off the head of the young leader of the Soga clan, Soga no Iruka, thus ejecting the Soga from power. Empress Kōgyoku abdicated immediately because she was polluted by being in the presence of death.

Prince Naka killing Soga no Iruka
from the Tōnomine Engi scroll, Edo period

Empress Kōgyoku’s brother took over but everyone understood that the real power in the land was now Prince Naka and that power was now in the hands of the imperial family again.

After her brother died Kōgyoku came back to the throne with a new, unpolluted name - Empress Saimei. She then set off to lead an armada to attack the Chinese and Sillan (Korean) ships that were threatening Japan but on the way she died. Prince Naka finally took power as the great Emperor Tenji.

The empresses who were to follow played a major part and varied roles in shaping the country Japan was to become. For their stories, watch out for my next riveting instalment!


All images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and in particular all things Japanese. She had two books out last year: The Shortest History of Japan (Old Street Publications) - 16,500 years of Japanese history in 50,000 words, full of stories and colourful characters - and her first ‘real’ book, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, reissued by Eland under her new pen name to acknowledge her Chinese roots - Lesley Chan Downer. For more see www.lesleydowner.com

A New Emperor for Japan - by Lesley Downer

Amaterasu Omikami, the Sun Goddess, by Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865)

In Japan the accession of a new emperor initiates a whole new era. Year 1 of the Reiwa Era, the Era of Beautiful Harmony, began on May 1st this year, the day that Emperor Naruhito took the throne. His father, Akihito, abdicated the previous day.

The emperors of Japan are said to be descended in an unbroken line from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami. For many centuries the emperors had a ritual rather than a political status; they were more like popes than kings. The emperor (and the occasional empress) acted as an intermediary with the gods, offering up prayers to protect Japan and ensure good crops, and at some periods they were worshipped as gods themselves.

Naruhito in his enthronement robes

As a result the emperor’s enthronement is a bit different from the coronation of a temporal monarch like Elizabeth II. There are no crown jewels, no golden carriage, no public procession.

There are three successive ceremonies.

Presentation of the Three Sacred Treasures
The first ceremony is the presentation of the Three Sacred Treasures - the sword, the jewel and the mirror - which were given by the Sun Goddess to her grandson when he descended to earth to become the founder of the imperial dynasty. All three once belonged to the Sun Goddess and date from legendary times.

The day Naruhito took the throne, he was formally presented with the sword and the jewel as proof of his rightful succession. The Sword is a replica. The original Grasscutter Sword is enshrined at Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya. The Jewel is an ancient and profoundly symbolic necklace. But the most important of the three, the Sacred Mirror, never leaves the Grand Shrine at Ise, Japan’s holiest shrine, akin to the Vatican or Canterbury Cathedral. Where western religions have an altar, at the heart of every shrine in Japan is a mirror, embodying the god. The Sacred Mirror embodies the Sun Goddess herself.

Enthronement Ritual

Emperor Jimmu (660-585 BC)
by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892)

The second ceremony, the enthronement ritual, will take place on October 22nd and international royalty, including Prince Charles, and heads of state will attend. Part is public and part seen only by the emperor and a few Shinto priests. The emperor, wearing full dress regalia, ritually informs his ancestors that he has ascended the throne. He then sits with the empress in a curtained octagonal pavilion topped with a golden Phoenix. The curtains swish open and he declares his ascension to the assembled dignitaries.

The Great Thanksgiving Festival
The third and most important ceremony is a religious one. It takes place in the middle of November. This is the legendary and tantalisingly secret Great Thanksgiving Ceremony, held by torchlight in dead of night deep in the imperial palace grounds in Tokyo.

It takes months of preparation. Special sacred rice has to be grown in paddies chosen and purified by elaborate Shinto purification rituals. Two thatched huts in the ancient native Japanese building style, preceding the arrival of Chinese influence, are constructed in the palace grounds. One represents the ancient style of houses in eastern Japan, the other of western Japan. The furnishings are also in ancient Japanese style. In one there is a vestigial straw bed and the other is for musicians.

Nintoku's tomb

The ritual takes place after nightfall. The emperor, dressed in the white silk robes of a Shinto priest, enters the first darkened hut at 6.30 p.m. Surrounded by chamberlains and assisted by court maidens he offers sacred rice and sake to the Sun Goddess, partakes of them himself and prays for bumper crops and national peace.

Then, after midnight, at 12.30, he enters the second hut. No one knows precisely what goes on, but according to some accounts he receives the soul of the Sun Goddess or even joins with her in sexual union, presumably symbolic, and thus assumes his divinity.

Descent from the Sun Goddess

Emperor Nintoku (313-399AD) by
Toyohara Chikanobu (1838-1912)

According to the story the first emperor of Japan was Jimmu, descended from Ninigi, the grandson of the Sun Goddess. Traditionally his accession is dated from 660 BC. He is famous for his long bow and the three-legged crow who accompanied him on his journey to Yamato, central Japan. The next 124 emperors are said to be descended directly from him.

Dotted around central Japan, mainly in the Nara area, are some 20,000 ancient burial mounds. Among them are 896 imperial tombs, including those of the 124 emperors, from Jimmu to right up to Hirohito, who died in 1989. Every year envoys arrive to conduct Shinto rituals at the tombs and to offer gifts from the emperor. Many of the most important are in and around the two ancient capitals, Nara and Kyoto. The biggest, a vast keyhole-shaped mound near Osaka, is the tomb of Emperor Nintoku, the sixteenth emperor (313 - 399 AD).

For many years it was forbidden to excavate the imperial tombs on the grounds that they are sacred religious sites. Then twelve years ago the Imperial Household Agency, that governs all matters to do with the imperial family, gave permission for archaeologists to enter the fringes of two of the tombs but not to excavate there. One suspicion is that the Agency fears that inspection of the tombs will reveal evidence that far from being descended from the Sun Goddess, the Japanese imperial family actually originated from China and Korea. 

Emperor Naruhito and Empress
Masako wait to greet President
Trump May 2019. Official White
House photo by Andrea Hanks

In 2001, on his 68th birthday, Emperor Akihito mentioned his Korean ancestry, saying, ‘I for my part feel a certain kinship with Korea, given that it is recorded in the Chronicles of Japan that the mother of [the Japanese] Emperor Kammu was descended from the line of King Muryong of Paekche [in Korea].’ 

The new Emperor, Naruhito, is very much a twenty first century monarch. He studied at Oxford University where he wrote a thesis on river transport on the Thames and went on to marry a multilingual diplomat, now Empress Masako. He knows Prince Charles and admires the way in which the British monarchy has made itself more accessible to the public. He has said that he wants to ‘stand close to the people’ and ‘bring a fresh breeze’ to the monarchy. Nevertheless he still has to begin his reign by paying his respects to the legendary founder of his dynasty - the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami.

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, is an epic tale of love and death set in nineteenth century Japan and is out now in paperback. It tells the story of how the Emperor was transformed from a reclusive religious eminence to the figurehead of the new political order in the middle of the 19th century. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons