Adopt-a-successor

[yanpa]

Adult adoptions: Keeping Japan's family firms alive

In Japan, an ancient practice has provided a solution for the age-old conundrum - how do family businesses survive when there are no sons to take over?

The tale began in AD717, when the god of Mount Hakusan visited Buddhist monk Taicho Daishi in a dream and told him to find a hot spring in nearby village Awazu - today's Ishikawa prefecture.

Daishi discovered the spot and ordered his pupil Garyo Hoshi to build a guest house.

Garyo Hoshi, in turn, preached Buddhism to his visitors and adopted a son as his successor who took his childhood name Zengoro.

That is how the world's oldest family business - according to the Guinness World Records - is believed to have started.

Since then, for nearly 1,300 years, the hotel and the name - Zengoro Hoshi - have been passed down the family for 46 generations.

But in a country where a son usually inherits a family name, how have they always managed to have a boy?

Well, there is a slight catch.

"When there were only girls, we adopted a daughter's husband," says the latest Zengoro Hoshi.

"In fact, my father married into the Hoshi family and was adopted."

It is a uniquely Japanese-style adoption known as Mukoyoshi.

Japan has the world's second highest adoption rate of more than 80,000 a year but most are adult men in their 20s and 30s.

..more...

[TennoChinko]

The adoption system is also used by homosexual men in Japan as a means of establishing a defacto civil union; in such a case, it is referred to as "adopt a suck-cessor.".