FAMILY LAW REFORM IN POSTWAR JAPAN: Succession and Adoption

How does a nation, defeated in war, respond to externally imposed reforms that set that nation’s family system upside down, completely eliminating the family’s modus operandi At least that is what the elimination of family kinship and single inheritance in reforms by the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in the 1948 Civil Code was meant to do. How did the Japanese respond to these reforms in Family Law that many believed would result in the destruction of the family? This study looks at succession and adoption in the years following the reform to understand how the Japanese were able to circumvent the Code and shape the family to meet their evolving needs.