414 COMPARATIVE LAW 



of the following causes; namely, sickness, the necessity of suc- 

 ceeding as heir to the headship of the main branch of the family, 

 or of resuscitating it, the desire to enter another house by mar- 

 riage, or other unavoidable causes. (Civil Code, arts. 753, 784.) 

 In both these cases there must always be an heir to succeed him 

 in the headship of the house; for nobody but a person who has 

 founded a new house may abolish it, as the abolition of a house 

 would bring with it, in other cases, the extinction of the worship 

 of the ancestors. (Civil Code, arts. 762, 763.) 



II. Loss of nationality. 



The house-system is a national institution, and foreigners not 

 being considered as belonging to any house, the house-headship 

 necessarily comes to an end when a house-head loses his nation- 

 ality, by naturalization or other causes mentioned in the law of 

 nationality (no. 66, 1899); just as a Roman paterfamilias lost 

 his patria potestas on account of the loss of citizenship by under- 

 going media capitis diminutio. 



III. The marriage of a female house-head. 



According to article 736 of the Civil Code, if a female house- 

 head marries, the husband enters the house of his wife, instead 

 of the wife's entering the husband's house according to the 

 usual rule, and at once becomes the house-head, unless the 

 parties concerned expressed a contrary intention at the time 

 of marriage. Thus succession inter vivos to the house-headship 

 occurs in case of the marriage of a female house-head. 



IV. The divorce of a husband who has married a female house- 

 head. 



As the husband entered the house and has become the house- 

 head in consequence of the marriage, he leaves the house by 

 divorce, and at the same time loses the house-headship. Thus 

 divorce in this case becomes a cause of succession inter vivos. 



V. Invalidation of marriage or adoption. 



If a man who married a female house-head, or an adopted 

 son or daughter has become a house-head, and the marriage or 

 the adoption is invalidated for one of the causes mentioned 

 in the ("ode, the husband or the adopted child leaves the house, 

 and the house-headship is lost. In this case, as the invalidation 

 has no retrospective effect, the preceding house-head, though 

 alive, such as the wife or the abdicated adoptive father, does 

 not recover the house-headship as if there had been no mar- 

 riage or adoption, but the rules of succession apply just as in the 

 case of death. 

 The above enumeration of the causes will show that succession 



inter vivos, which is not usually found in modern laws, occurs very 



frequently under the present Japanese law. 



