To foreigners it proves disastrously perplexing. For if you chance upon a man whom you have not met for some time, you can never be quite sure how to accost him. If you begin, "Well met, Green, how goes it?" as likely as not he replies, "Finely. But I am no longer Green; I have become Brown. I was adopted last month by my maternal grandfather." You of course apologize for your unfortunate mistake, carefully note his change of hue for a future occasion, and behold, on meeting him the next time you find he has turned Black. Such a chameleon-like cognomen is very unsettling to your idea of his identity, and can hardly prove reassuring to his own. The only persons who reap any benefit from the doubt are those, with us unhappy, individuals who possess the futile faculty of remembering faces without recalling their accompanying names.
Girls, as a rule, are not adopted, being valueless genealogically.
A niece or grandniece to whom one has taken a great fancy might of course be adopted there as elsewhere, but it would be distinctly out of the every-day run, as she could never be included in the household on strict business principles.
The practice of adopting is not confined to childless couples.
Others may find themselves in quite as unfortunate a predicament.
A man may be the father of a large and thriving family and yet be as destitute patriarchally as if he had not a child to his name.
His offspring may be of the wrong sex; they may all be girls.
In this untoward event the father has something more on his hands than merely a houseful of daughters to dispose of. In addition to securing sons-in-law, he must, unless he would have his ancestral line become extinct, provide himself with a son. The simplest procedure in such a case is to combine relationships in a single individual, and the most self-evident person to select for the dual capacity is the husband of the eldest daughter. This is the course pursued. Some worthy young man is secured as spouse for the senior sister; he is at the same time formally taken in as a son by the family whose cognomen he assumes, and eventually becomes the head of the house. Strange to say, this vista of gradually unfolding honors does not seem to prove inviting. Perhaps the new-comer objects to marrying the whole family, a prejudice not without parallel elsewhere. Certainly the opportunity is not appreciated. Indeed, to "go out as a son-in-law," as the Japanese idiom hath it, is considered demeaning to the matrimonial domestic. Like other household help he wears too patently the badge of servitude.
"If you have three koku of rice to your name, don't do it," is the advice of the local proverb--a proverb whose warning against marrying for money is the more suggestive for being launched in a land where marrying for love is beyond the pale of respectability.
