Stability in Japanese Kinship Terminology

Although there exists a substantial literature on the Japanese kinship system in Western languages, ¹ very little attention has been paid to the history of the development of kin terminology. Japanese scholars have been more interested in the questions raised by the extensive documentation available and have given us discussions of the early Chinese influence on legal codes dealing with kin relations, the history of the definitions of degrees of relationship, changing concepts of inheritance, and the varying emphases given throughout Japanese history to the horizontal and vertical fluctuations of the genealogical chart. The work of Nakata (1926, 1929) and Toda (1937) is an essential starting point for any student of the history of Japanese kin terms, and there are valuable papers by a number of Japanese sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and legal historians. ²