"
The mother is an instrument rather than a person in the life of the
house, and the older brother is the one on whom rests the responsibility
of continuing the family line. The younger brothers serve as subjects
for adoption into other families, especially those where there are
daughters to be married and family names to be continued. In a word, the
name belongs to the house and not to the individual. The habit of naming
children after relatives or friends of the parents, or illustrious men
and women, is unknown in Old Japan, though an approach to this common
custom among us is made by conferring or making use of part of a name,
usually by the transferrence of one ideograph forming the name-word.
Such a practice lays stress upon personality, and so has no place in the
country without pronouns, where the idea of continuing the personal
house or semi-personal family, is predominant. The customs prevalent in
life are strong even in death, and the elder brother or sister, in some
provinces, did not go to the funeral of the younger. This state of
affairs is reflected in Japanese literature, and produces in romance as
well as in history many situations and episodes which seem almost
incredible to the Western mind.
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