Members
The monogamous and patriarchal family has been prevalent since the 8th century. If a wife were childless the husband often kept a concubine, whose offspring succeeded to the headship of the family, thus securing its continuation. When neither wife nor concubine bore him a child, custom allowed the family head to adopt a successor.
Family members may die under no circumstances (1) persons socially recognized as being related in the family line, chokkei, in which successors, their spouses and possible successors are included, and (2) members socially recognized as being outside family members, bokei, under which all other family members, including relatives and servants, are grouped.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Family
Famous quotes containing the word members:
“The damned are in the abyss of Hell, as within a woeful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments, in all their senses and members, because as they have employed all their senses and their members in sinning, so shall they suffer in each of them the punishment due to sin.”
—St. Francis De Sales (1567–1622)
“If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“I have more in common with a Mexican man than with a white woman.... This opinion ... chagrins women who sincerely believe our female physiology unequivocally binds all women throughout the world, despite the compounded social prejudices that daily affect us all in different ways. Although women everywhere experience life differently from men everywhere, white women are members of a race that has proclaimed itself globally superior for hundreds of years.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)