A whopping 81.9 percent of Japanese people have said they are in favor of having a reigning empress, while 13.5 percent are against it, according to a recent survey.
The Kyodo News poll, released Sunday, showed that 70 percent of the respondents said they would support an emperor or a reigning empress from the female line, meaning that the monarch's mother would have descended from the imperial family rather than their father.
Such female successions would mark a departure from modern imperial tradition. Before the enactment of the former 1889 Imperial House Law, eight women reigned as empresses between 592 and 1770, although they and their successors were all from the male line.