It is difficult for us in America, who live under customs and laws in which the individual is the social unit and the family a union of individuals, to understand a system of society in which the individual is little or nothing and the family the social unit recognized both by law and custom. In Japan, a man is simply a member of some family, and his daily affairs, his marrying and giving in marriage, are more or less under the control of the head of his family, or of the family council. Only in case he is the head of the family is he able to marry without securing some one's consent, and then his responsibilities in regard to the headship may in themselves hamper him. If this is the case with the more independent man, it may be imagined how completely the woman is submerged under family influence. She may, under exceptional circumstances, become the head of a family, but this is usually only a temporary expedient, and even then she must subordinate herself more completely to the family and its interests than when she occupies a lowlier place. The headship of an unmarried woman lasts only until a husband has been selected for her, and the headship of a widow lasts during her guardianship of the rightful heir to the position. By Japanese law a widow is always the guardian of her minor children. The only way in which individuality before the law can be obtained by man or woman in Japan is through cutting the tie that binds to the family, and starting out in life afresh as the head of a new family. This new family must always be _héimin_, or plebeian, no matter how high in rank may have been the family from which the founder has gone out, but there is a continually increasing number of young men and women who prefer the freedom that comes from the headship of a small and new family, even if of low rank, to the state of tutelage or of hampering responsibility which must accompany connection with a larger and older social group. It seems likely that through this means an evolution from the family to the individual system will be effected, as the nation grows more and more modernized in its way of looking at things.