Japan's parliament this Friday voted through a historic revision of the Imperial House Law - 184 votes for, 57 against, after it had passed the lower house the week before. The reform changed everything about the status of women in the imperial family, except the one thing everyone was waiting for: a woman still cannot sit on the Chrysanthemum Throne.

The figures are what tell the story. The imperial family today numbers just 16 members, eleven of them women. Emperor Naruhito, 66, has exactly three possible heirs - his brother, Crown Prince Fumihito (60), his grandson Prince Hisahito (19), and his uncle Prince Masahito (90). In other words, the continuity of the world's oldest monarchy hangs on whether a single 19-year-old will have a male child. When a state reduces the survival of its own institution to the biology of one teenager, that is no longer tradition - it is a gamble.

The 1947 law, in fact written during the American occupation, set up a strict system: only male descendants through the male line inherit, princesses who marry a commoner must leave the institution, and the eleven collateral branches of the family abolished after the Second World War were thrown out of the line of succession.

What actually changed

Two things. First, women of the imperial family can now keep their status even if they marry outside the court - but with one decisive caveat: neither their husbands nor their children will be part of the imperial family. This directly hits Princess Aiko, the only daughter of Naruhito and Masako. At 24, she can remain a princess even if she marries a commoner, but her children stay outside the imperial line, with no right whatsoever to the throne.

Second, adoption of male descendants through the male line is allowed from the eleven abolished collateral branches. Candidates must be over 15, unmarried and childless. The adoptees cannot become emperors, but their own future male sons can enter the line of succession. The logic is to widen the male base so that continuity does not depend on Hisahito alone.

Here lies the paradox even the foreign press noticed: if Aiko one day has a son, that son could only become eligible for the throne if he were adopted into the imperial house through precisely this new system. So - her son, but not as her son. Kinship logic worthy of a textbook on the absurd.

The reform passed with a broad majority, but not with consensus. Voting against were the Constitutional Democratic Party, the communists and Reiwa Shinsengumi, mainly over the adoption clause and the absence of any progress toward equality in succession. And here comes the figure that stings most: according to Kyodo polls, up to 80 percent of Japanese support a woman becoming empress. The people are ready. Parliament - is not. When an institution so stubbornly refuses to hear its own people, the old Balkan question arises - who is it actually working for?