The Japanese family is a maze of "nominality." Full-grown young men and women are adopted as sons and daughters, in order to maintain the family line and name. A son is not a legal son unless he is so registered, while an illegitimate child is recognized as a true son if so registered. A man may be the legal son of his grandmother, or of his sister, if so registered. Although a family may have no children, it does not die out unless there has been a failure to adopt a son or daughter, and an extinct family may be revived by the legal appointment of someone to take the family name and worship at the family shrine. The family pedigree, therefore, does not describe the actual ancestry, but only the nominal, the fictitious. There is no deception in this. It is a well-recognized custom of Old Japan.2

2Gulick, S.L.n/an/an/an/a, , 214–215 (Fleming H. Revell & Company. By permission).