412 COMPARATIVE LAW 



resignations for the purpose of devoting the rest of their lives 

 to religious practice. As I have already said, house-headship 

 was rather an institution of public law than of private law, and 

 the resignation of office usually brought with it the loss of house- 

 headship. In later times the middle and lower classes began to 

 imitate the example set by the heads of noble families, until 

 it has become a general custom among the people. Until recently 

 it was a very common practice for retired persons to shave 

 their heads, like Buddhist priests, in token of their having given 

 up secular business and of having embraced the religious life. 

 It was for this reason that the designation of " niudo-inkyo " or 

 " priestly retirement " was employed for this kind of abdication. 

 This practice is very common among the Hindus where life is 

 distributed into three periods ; namely, the student, house- 

 holder, and ascetic periods. Minute regulations as to the life of 

 the ascetic are contained in Hindu law-books, especially in the 

 sixth chapter of the Code of Manu. Entering into a monastery 

 seems to have had the same effect as death in the early Germanic 

 and English laws (Young's Anglo-Saxon Family Law, Co. Litt. 

 133, Blaxland's Codex Legum Anglicanarum, p. 217) and in the 

 French law before the Revolution (Zachariae, Franz. Civilrecht, 

 sec. 162), but since the abolition of civil death in modern legal 

 systems succession inter vivos does not occur in European 

 families of law. 



(2) Political abdication. 



From an early period of our history, it was very common 

 for the upper and middle classes to resort to abdication for 

 various political reasons. Sometimes it was made use of by 

 unscrupulous ministers of state or influential servants of dai- 

 mios to deprive masters of their power, and put other persons, 

 perhaps puppets, in their places; sometimes, house-heads 

 retired in order to shift responsibilities to other persons' shoulders 

 and wield real power themselves, or pull strings from behind the 

 curtain; or sometimes they gave up the worldly life and led 

 the ascetic life out of political discontent or disappointment. 



(3) Legal abdication. 



I mean by legal abdication the compulsory loss of house-head- 

 ship by way of punishment or atonement for a crime or other 

 grave fault. Cases occurred very frequently during the feudal 

 times, especially under the Tokugawa Shogunate, in which 

 a house-head was sentenced or ordered to abdicate as a punish- 

 ment for his offense. Particular names have been given to the 

 kind of abdication, such as " zaikwa-inkyo," "or penal abdica- 

 tion"; or " chikkyo-inkyo, " or "confinement abdication"; or 

 " tsutsushimi-inkyo," or " reprimand abdication." House-heads 



