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by marriage, adoption, or any other cause, nor found a house of his or her own except where the more important duty of preserving the continuity of the worship of the main branch of the house renders such a step necessary.

Marriage, as an institution, must seek for the original cause of its recognition by law in ancestor-worship. The State recognised wedlock, and began to make rules for its protection, because it was regarded as a means of perpetuating the worship of ancestors. In the eyes of the old law it was essential that a family should perpetuate itself for ever, and marriage represented the union of man and woman for the purpose of obtaining a successor to maintain the continuity of ancestor-worship. It was a means to an end, and that end was the continuity of the sacra. It was considered one of the greatest misfortunes that could befall a man, to die without leaving a son to perpetuate the worship of his ancestors and himself. Mencius says: ‘There are three things which are unfilial, and to leave no posterity is the greatest of them.’ In the ‘Book of Filial Piety,’ Confucius says: ‘There are three thousand acts which are punished by the five punishments, but no crime is greater than filial impiety.’ Therefore to die without male issue was regarded as the greatest sin a man could commit against the doctrine of Chinese philosophy, which has been taught in our country for more than a thousand years. The reason of this doctrine is obvious. The posthumous happiness of the ancestors of a family depended on the proper performance of the family sacra. It was therefore the duty of every head of a house to marry, for the purpose of avoiding the calamity of the family sacra becoming extinct. It was the established principle of our customary law, which is maintained with some modifications in the Civil Code (Article 750), that a member of a house must obtain the consent of the head of the family for his or her marriage. The House Law (‘Ko-riyo’) of the Taiho Code also required the consent of grandparents, parents, and other relatives, before the marriage could be celebrated. According to Article 751 of the New Civil Code, if a member of a house marries without the consent of the head of the family, the latter may, within one year from the day of the marriage, exclude him or her from the household, or, if he or she has entered another house by the marriage, forbid his or her return to it in case of dissolution of marriage. As to the consent of parents, the first clause of Article 772 provides: ‘For the contracting of marriage, a child must obtain the consent of the parents who are in the same house. But this rule does not