The koseki system and Asougi
Foreword: this is cross-posted and elaborated on from a thread I made on Twitter about the same topic, and updates some information that’s either outdated or needed expansion.
A koseki (戸籍) refers to one’s family registry, and still carries a lot of legal weight today in Japan as a means of identification and records things such as births, deaths, marriages, adoptions, even changes of gender.
The first national koseki system was adopted in 1872, and up until 1976, it was very easy to get a hold of someone else’s koseki. All someone had to do was pay a fee, and they would be able to gain access to information like unusual deaths, wedlock births, and even criminal records.
The national koseki system thus started as a part-demographic information collection system, part-surveillance apparatus. — Japan’s discriminatory koseki registry system looks ever more outdated, Colin P.A. Jones
Ease of access and the resulting fear of social consequences not only created a panoptic system where you could snoop through other people’s business (and vice versa), but also reinforced the idea that family is only defined by blood— which is why child adoption so rare in Japan.
Most adoptions today are of mukoyōshi (婿養子), an adult male adopted by his wife’s family so that he’ll inherit the family businesses, typically when a household doesn’t have a proper successor. In contrast, there are significantly less special adoptions today.
Special adoption (特別養子縁組) refers to adopting a child, and until 2019, only qualified for children of and under age 6, which was raised to 14 (ages 15-17 under certain circumstances) that summer. As special adoptions are entered as blood relations, most people would prefer to adopt infants so children would grow up not knowing they were adopted.
Once a child is past the age of special adoption though, the names of their parents will be displayed on the koseki.
Now, how is this related to Kazuma Asougi?
First, we must go over shi ni haji (死に恥じ), aka shame after death.
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