Many studies have been done on "Munchuu", the patrilineal descent group, in Okinawan society. And so the following one is well known: that before "Munchuu Formation" the membership of the descent group or the household ("Ya") was not limited to patrilineal cansanguinity, and that such flexible principles of affiliation have been altered into rigid ones which exclude nonagnatic kin. Nonetheless, few reports have clarified what the descent group (i. e. "Munchuu") and the household (i. e. "Ya") in Okinawa are after all.
The aim of this paper is to examine the problems in succession to "Ya", which are related to Okinawan ancestor worship. Rather than trying to present a general description of the rule for succession to "Ya", I limit myself, in this paper, to one specific problem: why inheritance of "gwansu" (ancestors in the forms of ancestral tablets) has to be kept intact by generation after generation of first sons, and how such concept is related to the structure of "Ya" and "Munchuu".
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