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 English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What’s the greatest enemy of Christianity to-day? Frozen meat. In the past only members of the upper classes were thoroughly sceptical, despairing, negative. Why? Among other reasons, because they were the only people who could afford to eat too much meat. Now there’s cheap Canterbury lamb and Argentine chilled beef. Even the poor can afford to poison themselves into complete scepticism and despair.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)