The cage may be golden, but it still is immoral to lock up a family in it.

As you yourself say, the situation in Japan is pretty stable. The events in France you mention was during wartime, in the lead-up to what could be called "colonial collapse". Hardly comparable.

It matters because a hereditary head of state position (actually, any governmental/establishmentarian position) is a terrible symbol in what should be an egalitarian society, no matter if you have political power or not. I don't know how to put this more succinctly.

It may be a terrible symbol, but it seems like people get over it, if they even care very much. Constitutional monarchies, such as the Nordic countries, are among the most egalitarian countries in the world. Japan is egalitarian, both in terms of how the Japanese view their society, and how the wealth is distributed -- they are very close to European countries in that respect, and far more egalitarian than the US.

Yes, I'm from Sweden. I consider "our" monarchy to be a ignominious wart, ceremonial or not. We should always strive to improve society.

> It matters because a hereditary head of state position (actually, any governmental/establishmentarian position) is a terrible symbol in what should be an egalitarian society, no matter if you have political power or not.

Why should society be egalitarian? Nature isn't.

Why shouldn't society recognise the heirs of great men specially?

I think that the ideal government has voices for the great mass of the people; for the magnates; and for a monarch. The U.K. system — until Tony Blair destroyed it — was good for exactly this, although the removal of the Lords' ability to block legislation, and the addition of life peers were recent mistakes.

Except stability can be used to breed stability. France being on the Fifth Republic makes it considerably easier to argue for a Sixth Republic, and with Marine Le Pen doing rather well in the polls that isn't necessarily a good idea. Traditions have their place in that they become ingrained within the populace and considerably harder to shift.

Not really: people can point at the stability of the Fifth Republic and compare it against the previous regimes, which were quite the opposite. That creates a lot of inertia against scrapping a system of Republican government that currently fundamentally still works.

I don't know why we should be bike-shedding about something of absolutely zero consequence to the system of governance.

> The fourth republic had a symbolic president, and the fifth republic has a very powerful president, because DeGaulle demanded executive power as a condition of assuming the presidency during the Algerian crisis of the late 1950s. That's why the fourth republic ended and the fifth republic began -- DeGaulle had a new constitution written.

It's a bit more complicated than that, to be fair. A big part of de Gaulle's motivation for the semi-presiential system of the Fifth Republic was due to the instability of the parliamentary system of the Third and Fourth Republics. Whatever else you might say about de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic has been remarkably stable and orderly compared to the regimes that preceded it after the revolution.