Britain's royal wedding could help revitalize monarchy
The wedding ceremony of Britain's Prince William and Catherine Middleton, commonly known as Kate, was held in Westminster Abbey in London on Friday.
Prince William is the first son of the late Princess Diana, who in life captured the hearts of many people around the world, and Prince Charles. He is second in line to the throne after his father.
This is the first time in more than 350 years that a future king of England has married a so-called commoner. The royal nuptials were broadcast live around the world and watched by an estimated 2 billion people.
This shows public interest in the British royal family remains strong. The popularity of "The King's Speech," which won this year's Academy Award for Best Film, also helped shine a global spotlight on the royal wedding.
It appears, however, that Britons' feelings toward Friday's royal wedding are different from the sentiment that greeted the wedding of Prince William's parents 30 years ago.
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Royals haunted by scandal
The wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana swept people in up a fairy tale world, and set off a royal frenzy. In the 1990s, however, the couple separated and divorced, and Princess Diana died in a car crash in 1997. These events brought to light a number of conflicts within the royal family that had been hidden from public view. The image of the royal family as Britain's ideal family--a portrayal carefully nurtured since the Victorian era of the 19th century--fell apart.
During the 1990s, the divorces of Prince Charles' sister Princess Anne and brother Prince Andrew also created an uproar and provided plenty of fodder for the tabloids and other media.
The British royal family is no stranger to marital scandal, including that of King Henry VIII, who separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century.
With the British royal family often in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in the 1990s, some influential newspapers went so far as to call for it to be abolished.
According to recent opinion surveys, however, three out of four Britons support the existing constitutional monarchy. Prince Charles' conduct is sometimes said to have been a remote cause of events that ultimately led to Diana's death, but support for his taking the throne has increased to about half of the British populace.
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Moves to revise succession
The recovery in support for the British royal family apparently reflects a strong attachment to a constant institution in life during an age of radical change. The increase in Islamic immigrants and a new phase of stratification in British society also might have heightened people's desire to keep a symbol of integration in place.
Some members of the royal family have made efforts to get closer to the people.
Queen Elizabeth II herself now pays taxes, a gesture of cooperation with belt-tightening by the royal family. The royal family also has been keen to portray itself as open to ordinary citizens.
The right to the British throne has long been passed on preferentially to male lineal descendants of the royal family. But in recent years, there has been increased discussion of changing royal succession laws to allow the first child of a reigning monarch to take the crown irrespective of gender.
Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako canceled their scheduled attendance at the wedding ceremony in consideration of the hardships victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster are going through. Nevertheless, we hope the Imperial family will deepen its friendly ties with the British royal family.
Safety still top priority for Tohoku Shinkansen
Tohoku Shinkansen bullet trains resumed full operations Friday, 1-1/2 months after the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck the Tohoku region on March 11.
This restores the main artery connecting the Tokyo metropolitan area and major cities in Tohoku. We hope it will help the flow of people in business and tourism return to normal and get economic reconstruction efforts into full swing.
All Tohoku Shinkansen trains had been stopped because the disaster damaged rails, overhead wires and other equipment in 1,200 locations. The new Hayabusa train became unable to carry passengers just a week after its March 5 debut.
Strenuous repair work brought Tohoku Shinkansen trains back in stages. Service on the last remaining section--connecting Sendai and Ichinoseki, Iwate Prefecture--finally resumed Friday.
There are about 10 percent fewer trains than before the quake. Because they are traveling at slow speeds in some areas, it takes about four hours to travel between Tokyo and Shin-Aomori stations, although the shortest time for this trip was formerly three hours and 10 minutes.
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Major boost to travel
Nevertheless, transportation to disaster-hit areas will improve dramatically, as people previously had to transfer to such vehicles as airplanes, buses and cars to reach them. Coming at the beginning of the spring travel season, the resumed Shinkansen services will certainly help fill the Tohoku region with tourists.
After the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, it took three months for the Sanyo Shinkansen to be fully restored. The Tohoku Shinkansen was revived relatively quickly because the aim was to finish restoration work before the Golden Week holidays, during which tourist travel is expected to be high.
But when the Tokyo-Sendai section was reopened Monday, services were suspended for nearly five hours due to off-and-on power outages caused by difficulties with electric power transmission. Services also were disrupted in some sections Wednesday due to power outages and other reasons.
We welcome the fact that operations were resumed quickly, but neglecting safety checkups and safe operations will lead to trouble.
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Local lines must be restored
At the same time, the reconstruction of local lines that supported the lives of quake-hit local residents must not be forgotten.
Conventional railway lines running along the Pacific coast in the region were directly hit by tsunami, with railway tracks and station buildings swept away or suffering devastating damage. In four prefectures from Aomori to Fukushima, seven routes operated by East Japan Railway Co., as well as so-called third-sector semipublic railway services, remain partially inoperative. There currently is no prospect for their full restoration.
The central and local governments jointly shoulder half the costs of restoring railways after a major disaster. But it is considered difficult for semipublic railway operators, most of which are in the red, to pay the remaining portion.
Routes operated by these entities might even close down if steps are not taken to deal with the situation.
To help disaster-hit semipublic operators of local railways, the government should introduce special measures to raise its share of reconstruction costs. JR also needs to make all-out efforts to revive routes that are essential to local people's lives and not abandon disaster-wrecked lines.
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