JAPANESE CIVIL CODE 403 



in modern systems of law adoption no longer occupies the position 

 of importance which it held in archaic societies. It still survives in 

 most of the countries which have received Roman law, but with 

 several restrictions as to its effects, which make it in no way resemble 

 that assumption of real kinship which characterized the ancient 

 form of adoption. To the English family of law it is totally un- 

 known as a legal institution. 



But in Japan adoption may be regarded as the corner-stone of 

 family law. Without it the continuity of the house, upon which 

 rests the perpetuation of ancestor-worship, cannot be maintained. 

 The practice of adoption has been so common and universal among 

 the people, from ancient time down to the present day, that Professor 

 Chamberlain writes: "It is strange, but true, that you may often go 

 into a Japanese family and find half-a-dozen persons calling each other 

 parent and child, brother and sister, uncle and nephew, and yet 

 being really either no blood relations at all, or else relations in quite 

 different degrees from those conventionally assumed." 



Adoption in different systems of law may be classified with regard 

 to its object, under the following four heads: 



(1) Adoption for the purpose of perpetuating the family sacra. 



(2) Adoption for the purpose of obtaining a successor to house- 

 headship. 



(3) Adoption for the purpose of obtaining a successor to property: 



(4) Adoption for charitable purposes, or for consolation in case of 

 childless marriage. 



The historical order of the development, or rather the decay, of 

 the law of adoption is usually as indicated above. I will proceed to 

 explain them in order. 

 (1) Adoption for the purpose of perpetuating family sacra. 



Death without an heir to perpetuate the worship of ancestors was 

 considered to be the greatest act of impiety which a descendant 

 could commit. So in the case of the failure of male issue, it was the 

 bounden duty of a house-head to acquire a son by means of adoption. 

 Adoption was, as Fustel de Coulanges says, " a final resource to escape 

 the much dreaded misfortune of the extinction of a worship." 



Many provisions of our ancient Code show that the object of 

 adoption was the perpetuation of the sacra. The house law of the 

 Taiho Code provides that " A person having no child may adopt one 

 from among his relatives within the Fourth Rank of Kinship, whose 

 age does not exceed that which might have been attained by a son 

 of the adopter's own body." According to some commentators on 

 the Taiho Code, "having no child" here means that the adoptive 

 father should have reached the age of sixty years, or the adoptive 

 mother fifty years, without having male issue. The reason for limiting 

 the age of the adopter was, that as long as any hope of having a male 



