Japan PM wants cautious debate on royal sucession

TOKYO, Jan 4 (Reuters) Japan's prime minister wants a cautious debate on whether to allow women to inherit the throne, media said today, a day after one daily said the government had dropped a panel's proposal for equal succession rights.

Government advisers recommended in 2005 that women and their children be given equal rights to inherit the throne, urging a break with tradition to avoid a looming succession crisis.

But the birth of a boy to the wife of the emperor's second son last September -- the royal family's first male birth in more than 40 years -- effectively halted progress on a planned change in the imperial succession law.

''Keeping in mind that Price Hisahito was born last year, I would like to have a quiet and deep debate on the issue of stable succession,'' Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was quoted as saying by Kyodo news agency at the Ise shrine, dedicated to the sun goddess who is believed to be an ancestor of Japan's emperors.

Abe, visiting the shrine to pray for the New Year, previously belonged to a group opposed to revising the succession law.

The daily Sankei Shimbun yesterday reported that Abe, who took office last September, would scrap suggestions made at the government panel in 2005, and that the government would debate ways to maintain the male line.

Traditionalists say that changes in succession are needed but prefer to preserve the male line by reviving princely houses abolished after World War Two or bring back royal concubines, a practice abandoned by the current emperor's father.

Next in line to the Japanese throne, Crown Prince Naruhito, and his wife have only one child, Princess Aiko.

REUTERS DKA VV1747