If you want a request form for the koseki download it here. It is in a Adobe Acrobat Reader File.
If you have any additions for the glossary of Japanese genealogical terms please email them to me: arries@mac.com
BEGINNING RESEARCH IN JAPANESE GENEALOGY
KOSEKI RECORDS OTHER RECORDS
I. Koseki records
The place to start in Japanese genealogical research is with the household registry record called koseki. For the last century or so, the Japanese government has required all citizens to be registered at one address under one head of household. Details of birth, marriage, adoption, death, divorce and other matters affecting the family structure are all recorded for as far back as the mid-1800's. Also, when a registered son marries and remains in his father's koseki, the bride's parents' names and address are recorded in her father-in-law's koseki. The koseki is housed in the local city or village office.
Recently passed privacy laws have made the koseki unavailable to all but family members. For this reason, the Genealogical Society is unable to film these records. To obtain a copy of your family's koseki, fill out the attached form and send it to the office where the koseki is housed. Give the name of the householder together with proof of family relationship. Included the Japanese characters for the name, if possible. All Japanese names can be pronounced several different ways, so a request written only in romanization--containing what you think is the correct pronunciation of the name--may be impossible to fill accurately, if at all.
The average fee for a copy of one koseki is about ¥2,500 (this fee is about 15 years old. Check to see what the fee is now). You should send an international money order with the request. If not, you will receive a bill later--if the clerk was willing to help you without pre-payment. You can make several requests at once, if you have the names of several householders, but once you obtain one ancestor's koseki you will likely learn from it the names of others whose records you will want to obtain. Pay all bills as quickly as possible to ensure continued co-operation from the offices.
If the person you are researching was not a household head, you must learn the householder's identity because the koseki is filed under his name. It may not be possible to locate the koseki under the name of a household member. Many younger sons, who were never heads of households, emigrated to America seeking greater opportunities. You must find the householder under whom this immigrant was registered in Japan. You should be able to learn this from immigration records. The householder could be the immigrant's father, older brother, uncle, grandfather, or in-law.
A complete copy of a koseki is called a koseki tohon. When a person leaves a household, for whatever reason, his or her name is crossed out but is still legible. When an abridged copy or abstract (koseki shohon) is made, these deleted people are not copied in tot he new version of the record. Such omissions are usually easy to discern, however, because each child of either sex in a family is numbered in order of birth: first son, first daughter, second son, etc. If someone is missing from a koseki, you can request an older version of the record and the deleted person will probably appear in it. When all person in a koseki are deleted, the record goes into the joseki (closed) file. The joseki is available for 80 years or more after expiration.
Addresses of all city and village offices in Japan can be obtained from the Consule of Japan nearest you. Please give the name of the city or village as well as the name of the prefecture to avoid confusion. For example, "Hiroshima" is the name both of a prefecture and of its capital city. Many widely scattered villages in Japan have the same name. Always include the Japanese characters whenever possible.
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II. Other records
There are many other types of records besides the koseki, but they are harder to obtain and use. The Family History Library's Japanese collection is still quiet small and very spotty. Here is a brief description of some other record types.
The Family History Library does have a few records such as kakocho(Buddhist death register) and shumon aratamecho (examination of religion register). Kakocho are still being created, but the shumon aratamecho was discontinued and superseded by koseki when Christianity was legalized in 1873. Kakocho are housed at the local temple of the sect to which the deceased belonged. You can best obtain the name and address of that temple from your Japanese relatives. Shumon aratamecho and similar records might be in the local library, or in the possession of a descendant of the village headman, if they still exist. If microfilm copies of the records you seek are not already in the Genealogical Library, a trip to Japan is the only way to continue research in kakocho and shumon aratamecho records unless you are in contact with some co-operative relatives.
Once you have traced your pedigree as fully as possible using koseki records, it may be possible to find your family in the Family History Library's collection of Japanese genealogies--if you are a descendant of court nobility, a great samurai (warrior) family, or a very wealthy family of commoners. Only such people were allowed to have surnames before the Meiji Restoration (began 1868), though some wealthy commoners bent the law and used a surname before the law was changed. If you have no such connections, the only way to extend your line beyond what is in the koseki is through the kakocho and shumon aratamecho.
Some families have genealogies giving their pedigrees back to mythological times, always claiming descent from some hero, statesman, emperor, or deity. Such claims may be true up to a point, but they remain open to serious doubt. The point of suspicion is usually the place where one's remote ancestor is claimed to have married a remote descendant of the great man. In any case, some Japanese still believed the claims made in the old histories about the establishment of the Japanese empire by the Emperor Jinmu in 660 BCE, and many families claim to be descended from his companions. The Japanese imperial family is today the oldest continually reigning family in history but, even so, their pedigree is certain only as far back as about ACE 500. Other great Japanese families might have legitimate lines extending this far back, but most of them do not.
Japanese Americans whose families have been in America for more than two generations should first ask for assistance from the reference or correspondence specialists in the US/Canada section of the Family History Library. Questions about Japan itself and the Japanese Language can be addressed to the Asian Cataloging section.
Note: Thanks to Mr. Brady for this information.
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