JAPANESE CIVIL CODE 405 



and samurais had their fiefs belonging to their houses. Under the 

 feudal regime the nature of military service required that males only 

 should become house-heads. Hence the failure of male issue was also 

 the cause of adoption. It was necessary to make provision against 

 the contingency of a house becoming extinct and the fief being 

 escheated by failure of heirs. As professions were at that time 

 usually hereditary and were considered as belonging to certain 

 houses, adoption was frequently resorted to, in order to keep the 

 profession in the house. Physicians, artists, masters of fencing, riding, 

 archery, professors of classics and the like, often adopted, by special 

 permission, those qualified to succeed them in the profession, even 

 though they may have had sons of their own, the latter, however, 

 being unworthy of their fathers. This kind of adoption was called 

 " geido-yoshi " or "arts-adoption." 



It has just been remarked that the Taiho Code fixed the lower 

 limit of the adopter's age at sixty for the father and fifty for the 

 mother. But this rule took another form under the law of the Toku- 

 gawa Government. The limit of the age was fixed as low as seven- 

 teen, A house-head above that age, or even by special permission 

 under that age, who had no male issue was allowed to adopt a son, 

 in order to prevent the extinction of a house by his sudden death, 

 causing the escheat of his feudal property. A person between the 

 ages of seventeen and fifty years could even adopt a son on his death- 

 bed, which kind of adoption was called "kiu-yoshi" or "quick 

 adoption." But after the age of fifty, "quick adoption" was not 

 allowed, so that he was obliged to provide for the succession to the 

 house-headship early in life, even if he still had the hope of having 

 male issue. The Taiho Code allowed adoption only in old age, be- 

 cause it was desirable that ancestor-worship should be continued 

 by the nearest blood descendants. The Tokugawa Law allowed 

 and encouraged adoption by young people, and attached severe 

 penalties to the neglect of the precaution to provide for succession 

 early in life, in order to avoid the chance of a house becoming extinct. 

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



Next comes the time when the notions of succession to sacra and 

 house-headship gradually recede into the background and the 

 notion of property succession comes to the fore. This stage is first 

 reached in the new Civil Code. With the restoration of the Im- 

 perial power and the abolition of feudalism, house-headship has 

 lost more than half of its former importance. Fiefs were abolished; 

 offices and professions ceased to be hereditary privileges of house- 

 heads; and so far as public law is concerned, house-members now 

 stand on an equal footing with house-heads. What remains of the 

 rights and privileges attaching to house-heads is enjoyed within the 

 sphere of private law. Of these the right of enjoying house-property 



