406 COMPARATIVE LAW 



is the most important, at least, so far as material interests are con- 

 cerned. Besides, house-members are now allowed to have independent 

 property of their own, as I have already explained, and they may 

 adopt just in the same way as house-heads, provided the consent 

 of the latter is obtained. (Civil Code, art. 750.) During the feudal 

 period, only house-heads were allowed to adopt, because the object 

 of adoption was the continuation of house-headship; but now 

 adoption is no longer the exclusive privilege of house-heads because 

 its object is not limited to obtaining a successor to house-headship. 

 Wills, although not quite unknown to the old Japanese law, were 

 very rare in practice and their place was taken by adoption. What 

 is done in Europe and America by mil is done in Japan by adoption. 

 Instead of giving away property to another person by will, which 

 becomes effective after death, a Japanese takes another person into 

 his house by adoption during his lifetime and makes the latter the 

 expectant successor to his property. 



(4) Adoption for consolation in case of childless marriage. 

 This is the only kind of adoption which has no connection with the 

 house-system, and marks the last stage in the history of the law of 

 adoption. In Occidental systems of jurisprudence, will has taken 

 the place of adoption, and the principal ground on which this institu- 

 tion is still retained is for consolation in case of childless marriage. 

 Although the adopted child usually obtains the right of succeeding 

 to the adopter's property, this is the effect of adoption and cannot 

 be regarded as the ground for allowing adoption. Consolation in the 

 case of a childless marriage constitutes the principal motive to this 

 act, and therefore most systems allow adoption only when the 

 adopter has no children of his own and is of such an age as to pre- 

 clude reasonable expectation of any being born to him. In Japan 

 also adoption often takes place from the same motive, but it cannot 

 be regarded as a legal ground, because the new Civil Code does not 

 limit adoption to the case of childless marriage. The Japanese law 

 of adoption is now in a transient state, and is passing from the second 

 to the third stage of its development, but has not yet entered the fourth. 



XVI. Succession in General The Evolution of the Law of 

 Succession 



I thank it may be laid down as a universal rule of the evolution 

 of the law of succession that it passes through three stages of evolution; 

 the first stage is that of the succession to sacra, the second that of the 

 succession to status, and the third that of the succession to property. 

 Each stage of development, however, did not form a distinct period 

 in itself, but the later was gradually evolved out of the earlier by the 

 process of differentiation. In ancient times the duty of performing 

 and continuing the worship rested on the head of a house, and the 



