Adoption as an Heirship Strategy under Demographic Constraints: a Case from Nineteenth-Century Japan

This article examines the adoption practices of South-Tama peasants in late nineteenth-century Japan on the basis of an 1870 household register (2,057 households). We find that the institution of adoption was the major heirship strategy for these households. The probability of adoption varied by the differential number of surviving siblings, and by economic status, thereby creating social mobility among them. Adoption was an important way to redistribute sons, benefitting households with and without sons and preventing household extinction.