What happened to Japanese Nobility?

12 comments

1. They are typically still wealthy, oftentimes being highly placed within some of Japans most elite institutions (e.g., businesses, govt., universities) and there is a dying trend of them intermarrying amongst one another but there is no official recognition of them. Additionally, unlike European royals they don’t continue to use their previously held now extinct titles since the Constitution legally abolished the aristocracy. This has posed a problem for issues of Imperial inheritance as when a female royal marries a commoner she becomes a commoner, and the Imperial family is rapidly dwindling in size.

2. They were officially unrecognized by the present day Constitution, Article 14:

   >All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin. **Peers and peerage shall not be recognized. No privilege shall accompany any award of honor, decoration or any distinction, nor shall any such award be valid beyond the lifetime of the individual who now holds or hereafter may receive it.**

   Of course, they still *exist*, but they’ve been legally separated from the government (and thus, powerless and toothless) since the enactment of the current modern Constitution.

   Likewise, the upper house was renamed from the House of Peers to the House of Councillors after the Meiji Constitution was re-written/amended.

3. They still have an exclusive club for descendants of the former nobility: [the Kasumi Kaikan (霞会館)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/05/21/the-last-retreat-of-japans-nobility/8fa34c94-e808-43eb-916d-3806924759bd/), which built the first modern skyscraper in Japan, the [Kasumigaseki Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasumigaseki_Building).

4. You mean the Meiji nobility ?

   It still exists and functions as an non-profit association, the “Kasumi Kaikan”, with a thousand or so families being members. They still regularly meets the Imperial family.

   Inside the Kasumi kaikan you have some hierarchy depending on whether the nobility comes from the Imperial side (Kuge) or the Shogunate/Samurai side (Buke). The top Kuge members are also members of the Toshoke, with even closer links to the Imperial family.

   It’s named after the location of its HQ, at the Kasumigaseki Building. The current head is Munetoshi Matsudaira (a descendant of the head of the Echizen Matsudaira).

   And to you question, the Kasumi Kaikan is definitely not open to the general public…

   The Imperial family is another matter.

5. There is no such stuff, it’s just something to market the country

6. Generally they have become mingled among newer riches, and less separate from the rest of the society. Some families lost their fortunes, but most are still well off. Gakushuin remains *the* school for them, although not exclusively any more. For (far) more details, I recommend Takie Sugiyama Lebra’s *Above the Clouds*.

7. The old “real” aristocracy that supported the imperial government is called Kuge, and they largely lost their power with the rise of Samurai. Most of them were reduced to selling their cultural capital as “Iemoto” of various arts. They got a big boost from the Meiji restoration, but they still have more pride than actual power. Their world went properly sideways in the 15th century, so there was several hundred years of total chaos and barely getting by. Many lost traditions had to be resuscitated by studying ancient manuscripts, so the level of continuum with the past is often overstated.

   I’ve heard the Kyoto aristocrats understand their place in the world, and have a level of pragmatism dealing with political power, but the Nara families are still stuck in 800A.D and impossible to deal with.

8. I’m familiar with the Kikkawa family that ruled Iwakuni after the start of the Edo period. Around the time of the Meiji restoration, the Kikkawa lord purchased a large swath of mountainous forested land and invested in the local forestry industry. His descendants still maintain that business today and use it to maintain their social status.

   I’m not as familiar with how other feudal lords dealt with the changing times, but I’m sure that many had similar stories where they transitioned their political power into business capital.

9. I read somewhere that they got bought out in the modern era when they lost their status. Lose status. Take the money. Start a major family corporation.

   It’s obviously a bit different from what others have shared here.

10. AFAIK, quite a few families are still around, and they’re still influential. The cadet branches of the Imperial Family are all extinct in the male line, save for the Fushimi-no-Miya, but the only remaining male member is 90, and then there’s a separate branch of the Fushimi-no-Miya, the Oke, who have much more extant families, 5. And some of the older shogun families still have heirs to this day, notably Tokugawa Iehiro. As for the families from the House Of Peers, there a few extinct but many are still extant. They meet at the Kasumi Kaikan, an elite club whose memberships are reserved exclusively for the former nobility.

11. Yes, I think so, according to the drama Yangotonaki Ichizoku.

12. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c06133/