Now, in the Middle Ages in Europe, when a king grew tired of affairs of state, he abdicated.

So in the Far East, when the head of a family has had enough of active life, he abdicates, and his eldest son reigns in his stead.
From that moment he ceases to belong to the body politic in any active sense.

Not that he is no longer a member of society nor unamenable to its general laws, but that he has become a respectable declasse, as it were.

He has entered, so to speak, the social nirvana, a not unfitting first step, as he regards it, toward entering the eventual nirvana beyond.

Such abdication now takes place without particular cause.