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the person to be adopted is under fifteen years of age, the parents in the same house may consent to the adoption on his or her behalf.

That the object of adoption was the perpetuation of ancestor-worship may be also inferred from the old strict rule that only a kinsman could be adopted as a son. The Taiho Code limited it to within the kindred of the fourth degree. From the remains of the Taiho Criminal Code, which have come down to us, we know that a penalty of one years’ penal servitude was inflicted upon anyone who adopted a son from a different clan, and one of fifty floggings for anybody who assisted him. This prohibition against the adoption of a person not related in blood seems to have been observed till the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate. It derives its origin from the belief that ‘the spirit does not receive the offerings of strangers.’ There is a law, enacted in the first year of Genna, A.D. 1615, that adoption must be made from persons of the same clan name—that is, from the descendants of the ancestor of the adopter. This rule, as well as the prohibition of ‘quick adoption’ before mentioned, was so strictly enforced that many feudal lords’ houses became extinct on account of the failure of heirs; and in consequence their estates were forfeited, and thousands of their vassals, or ‘Samurai,’ lost their feudal salary. The result was, that those ‘Ronin,’ or members of the military class who have lost their feudal position, and could not, and would not if they could, earn a living by agriculture or commerce, became seditionaries, and often excited insurrections and joined in civil commotions, which were very frequent in the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate. That Government soon saw that the relaxation of this strict law of adoption was necessary in order to maintain the peace of the country. In A.D. 1651, the fourth year of Keian, soon after the famous plot of Yui-no Shosetsu to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate, an important modification was introduced into the law of adoption. From that time adoption from different clans was not strictly forbidden, but the amended law enjoined that a man who had no son should adopt one from the same clan, although in case of failure to find a suitable person permission might be obtained to adopt a person of different clan. Although the law of adoption was revised and amended several times, this rule remained substantially the same for more than two hundred years, till the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The rigorous rule of limiting an adoption to persons of the same clan name practically lost its force by the introduction of the just-mentioned proviso, and it has not, therefore, been adopted in the new Code.

Another requirement of adoption is the absolute failure of male issue. The House Law of the Taiho Code only allowed