Adoption

[Reo]

I know from IRL experience that a bunch of SE Asian countries (I know China and Japan) have cultural taboos against adoption. Not so much that children are sent away to live with someone else, but the idea that you call someone not of your blood as your child is seen as taking from the family to give to an outsider.

Is this an attitude that would be common in Rokugan?

[Jiyo Sora]

Yoritomo and Aramasu indicate that, at least in canon, it wasn't considered too much of a stretch.

Likewise, the Horiuchi Family, born of a typo though it may have been, formally adopted orphans as a matter of course.

In the Birbverse we so merrily populate, it's still early days yet, but the Imperial Household includes Shiba's children by Jiyo also being considered Yuzuru's, so I think blood is already seen as secondary to rearing in at least some cases.

Moreover, same-sex marriage being enshrined as legal from the word go means that some adoptions are likely simply as a matter of course.

[Reo]

Ok cool. I finally read the Scorpion clan book and the Diamyo accepting his wife's bastard child as his was supposed to be a big deal.

It might have made Spider different, because they look like they are hella adopting

[Seppun Dawei]

Accepting a known fruit of infidelity is a big deal.

The adoption itself, less so. Notable, perhaps, but not massively so.

[Nozomi]

Yeah, acknowledging an infidelity which results in a bastard probably has negative consequences, but is ultimately possible. Other forms of adoption, particularly with the prevalence or at least existence and public acceptance of pairings that aren't seen in canon L5R, would highlight a likelihood that adoption itself won't carry any of the real world taboos that it might in some cultures today. The only reason that the former might have negative consequences is the infidelity itself.

[Miyako]

Mirumoto Hojatsu was another famous adopted child, though I'm not sure if he was adopted after the Kami fall or not, doesn't really say (but Mirumoto had a real son too and ceded succession to Hojatsu after Mirumoto's death). Hell, there were crazier ones too, like Doji Midoru whose real dad was Emma-O! Outside of infidelity, it did seem like adopting a child within your extended family as one's own occurred now and again - Kakita Noritoshi, sensei of the Kakitu Dueling Academy, was adopted by his uncle after the latter killed his half-brother, whom was also Noritoshi's father, over a plot to kill their own dad. Likewise, Crane Champ Doji Satsume adopted his brother's child after he was killed in combat and the wife died in childbirth. So on that end it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

I guess what you're talking about, though, is more along the lines of someone completely family-less or wholly unrelated to a family in any way being adopted into a family. Maybe that's a thing going on in the tribes right now? Takes a village and all that? I'm not sure that there are too many examples of that (Yoritomo being the biggie I think) but if that wasn't looked at as being crazy in a time of absolute bonkers-level crazy then I don't think it's a stretch to say it'd be a notable thing but not shocking-level stuff. Shock-level and scandalous-ness would probably depend more on who the adopting parent and child are rather than just the act of adoption itself.

[Jin]

Well Jin is quasi-adopting by marrying the girl's mother and if you give his daughter a hard time he will be very, very disappointed in you.

[Ko]

I could put on my work-hat and deliver a giant, longwinded "it's complicated!" here, but I'll restrain myself (this is me being restrained ). Anyway, yeah, attitudes about adoption in modern Asia are, well, modern. Even if you look back a century or two, you'll find that more restrictive adoption practices tended to have roots in patrilineal ritual and property systems that Rokugan seemingly doesn't share in its "fully developed" era, let alone Dawn-era.

There're two parts to "adoption" that we usually merge together in the modern world, but which haven't always been joined at the hip that way. One is guardianship of a child when you're not that child's biological parent, and the other is the ritual and social status of "my very own offspring." If you became the guardian of a parent-less kid, that wasn't "adoption" by default in premodern Asia, because there were all sorts of other ways to demarcate that relationship without giving the child the ritual status of son/daughter/heir.

Meanwhile, if you were a man of property/influence who needed an heir in one of the neo-Confucian regimes of the 16th-19th centuries (or so), you wanted to find somebody who was (ideally) a member of the same patrilineal family tree, from the generation below yours. Didn't necessarily have to be an actual child. He could be in his forties with kids of his own--ritually speaking that solution was totally fine as long as he was in the right place in the genealogy. But potential parents also had to balance the possibility that intra-family adoptees, especially adult ones, would have other loyalties or obligations besides themselves--birth parents and so on. So some people did prefer to acquire a small child, change his surname, and raise him themselves*... and this was often discouraged by authorities as being less ritually correct, and also as a potentially huge problem if the kid's birth family of total strangers should show up and make a claim on his inheritance. Adopting your daughter's husband was another common but potentially problematic work-around.

And then there's the Japanese aristocracy, who used adoption and fictive/social kinship all over the place as a pretty major organizing force in political/social life. That also generally wasn't childless parents + anonymous orphans, it was adults or older children (of both sexes) whose birth parents were often very much still around.

"Late" Rokugan seems to have a fair amount of all of those kinds of adoption (with the possible exception of son-in-law adoption, because daughters can be full heirs), and in a very loosey-goosey way all around. They aren't strict about patrilineality; the only bloodlines that seem to seriously matter are the Kami ones, and in a unisex sort of way. And rules of property inheritance in Rokugan are also blessedly left vague. So, yeah, whatever we do in Dawn, we won't be changing much there, because there aren't a lot of fixed rules to change!

*Adoption of very young, healthy, male children in the PRC actually looks more or less like this now, too; it isn't very visible because parents often downplay the fact their son is adopted. IDK how common this is in other parts of the formerly-Neo-Confucian world because I'm not as familiar. Kidnapping and trafficking of small boys for adoption is a recurrent phenomenon in China, though.

[Ryoshun Mai]

I know the books mention Dragon adopt as they have low birth rates, though they keep it on the down low.

[Togashi Saruko]

I know the books mention Dragon adopt as they have low birth rates, though they keep it on the down low.

I thought that was mostly a Nu5R thing.

Secrets of the Dragon mention that orphans are often given to the Tattooed Order(s), or that destitute peasants who wish a better life for their children abandon them anonymously at temples (making it so that Dragon monestaries often serve dual purposes of holy sites and orphanages).

[Hanzou]

Ultimately, which family you belong to is determined at your gempukku, regardless of your blood. There have been a number of examples of children who were hostages of or fostered to other clans who chose to swear loyalty to that clan, such as Bayushi Sunetra.

[Togashi Saruko]

Yeah, basically canon Rokugan has been mostly "if I say it's my kid, it's my kid". Like, most people aren't going to challenge you on such a statement anyway.

[Ongaku no Ryoko]

Sparrow don't adopt.

#brutalshitsparrowdosotheydon'tstarve