
Japanese Family History (日本の家族歴史)is a Facebook group run by Martinus Wolf with an active membership of over 1.7k people seeking to discuss and research Japanese family history and genealogy. I first came across Martinus through a Zoom workshop he offered during the height of the pandemic on obtaining your Koseki Tōhon 戸籍謄本 (Japanese family registry document). Even as someone with Japanese citizenship, obtaining your koseki from abroad is a complicated procedure, and for those who may be several generations removed or don't speak the Japanese language, it may seem like an impossible task. Martinus helps demystify the process. While the group centers around the workshops Martinus offers, it has come to be a vibrant space where people share their fascinating discoveries and rich family histories. If you've ever been curious to learn more about your Japanese heritage perhaps now is the time.
I reached out Martinus to learn more about his personal motivation and the classes he offers.
How did you get interested in researching Japanese family histories?
My wife is originally from Japan. We got married while I was still at Stanford and we just celebrated our 30th anniversary last December. During one of our trips back to Japan, my Japanese mother-in-law asked if we could research her family history, as well as my father-in-law’s family history. Although my wife was born and raised in Kyōto, both of her parents were from neighboring Shiga prefecture. After getting back to the U.S., I ended up tackling my mother-in-law’s request. Based on some internet research, it seemed like that I needed to start with requesting koseki family register, but the process was not very clear (in either English or Japanese). I decided to write a detailed letter to the city of Takashima – this is a city at the north end of Lake Biwa and is where my mother-in-law’s ancestral village is located. My letter went on and on – for over 10 pages. Question after question. I was trying to clearly understand what was going on with requesting koseki family registers. I sent it off to Takashima, but not really with very high expectations. A couple of weeks later, I received a lengthy email that answered each of my questions in great detail. Based on these answers, we ended up making successful koseki requests to five different cities in Shiga prefecture: Takashima (高島), Nagahama (長浜), Kōka (甲賀), Konan (湖南), and Rittō (栗東).
Some time later, I was talking with a Japanese American friend at church about this experience and she asked me if I could help her make a similar koseki request. She said that she had been told by relatives several times that the koseki documents had been destroyed during the war (her ancestors’ home was only about 1 mile from where the atomic bomb had detonated in Hiroshima City), but she wanted to confirm for herself. I agreed to help her make the request – again not expecting a whole lot of success. However, we were surprised when we got a response back saying that they had some documents. After that success, she said that I really should share my knowledge with the general Japanese American community.
A couple of months later, I volunteered to teach a class at our church’s family history day. I was given approval to do so but was told that I was responsible for generating attendance for my class, so I spent a couple weeks trying to drum up interest among my limited contacts. On the day of the class, only a handful of people showed up. Most of them I recognized because I personally invited them; however, one of the people I did not know. He lived in the general vicinity of my church and I asked him if he would be interested in requesting koseki for his ancestors. He agreed and we were successful in requesting documents from a small city in Kumamoto prefecture. Afterwards, he indicated that he was on the Executive Committee at the Buddhist Church of Sacramento and asked if I would be interested in teaching a Japanese family history class as part of their Continuing Buddhist Education series.
This led to a number of in-person teaching opportunities at local Buddhist and Christian churches established by Japanese immigrants, including the Buddhist Church of Sacramento (established 1899), the Sacramento Japanese United Methodist Church (established 1891), the Buddhist Church of Florin (Sacramento County) (established 1919), and the First United Methodist Church of Loomis (Placer County) (established 1903).
Following a second in-person class at the Buddhist Church of Sacramento in January 2020, there were some initial discussions about setting up a family history booth at the church’s Annual Japanese Food & Cultural Bazaar, but these discussions got scrapped with the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic in Spring 2020. However, in one of the cancellation emails, someone suggested that I teach some Japanese family history classes on Zoom – so that’s what I did. Demand was extremely strong for these classes – especially during the early pre-vaccination lockdown phase. Over time, I have limited my classes to one class a month.
Following my in-person class at the Buddhist Church of Florin (only about 4 miles from my house), I was contacted by someone who had attended the class. He indicated that he worked in Silicon Valley and that his great-grandparents were some of the founding members of the church in Florin. He wanted to work with me to develop tools that would assist other people in the congregation research their family history. We developed two key tools: a general universal English-language koseki request form that would be acceptable by all Japanese municipal offices and a look-up database that provides the linkage between the 15,000+ villages existent in 1889 (when villages were uniformly and consistently established in Japan) and the 1,900 current Japanese municipalities. The look-up database is currently available at http://www.mykoseki.com/find-my-koseki/
Please tell me about your background?
My connection with Japan started with a call to serve as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Japan Kōbe Mission from July 1988 to August 1990. After two months of language training at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, I flew over to Japan in late September 1988. At that time, the Japan Kōbe Mission covered the Hyōgo, Kyōto, and Shiga prefectures and the northern part of Ōsaka prefecture in the Kansai area, as well as Okinawa. I worked in four different areas during my two years in Japan: Kakogawa (加古川), Fukuchiyama (福知山), Jōyō (城陽), and Kōbe Nishi (神戸西).
The five months I spent in Kakogawa probably were the most impactful for my Japanese language skills (and future interest in Japanese family history). During that time, I lived with three other missionaries. One of the other missionaries was from Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee and for whatever reason, he took an intense interest in me learning Japanese – in particular, written Japanese. It turns out that I am a visual learner and I was initially having great difficulty picking up the oral aspects of Japanese at the Missionary Training Center. He spent 10-15 minutes every day during our study time and our mealtimes going over various aspects of the Japanese language (the subject-object-verb sentence structure, verb conjugations, time words, counters, the use of Japanese-language dictionaries, etc.) He also spent time teaching me the fundamentals of kanji (radical meanings, stroke order, kun’yomi versus on’yomi readings, etc.). On my first day in the Kakogawa apartment, I noticed that one of his study techniques was to post handmade kanji flashcards on the wall of our bathroom (actually there was only a toilet because our ofuro/shower was in a separate room) – on my second day (and every subsequent day), he also posted a handmade kanji flashcard for me.
After my mission, I returned to Stanford University in September 1990. I had completed my freshman year before my mission and then stopped out for two years. When I started at Stanford in September 1987, I had initially intended to major in mathematics, but somewhere during my mission, I lost most of math skills. After a bit of an existential struggle, I finally settled on majoring in Civil Engineering specializing in air quality. I completed a co-terminal masters program and graduated with B.S. and M.S. degrees in June 1994.
Along the way, I also completed a B.A. degree in Japanese. Upon returning to Stanford in September 1990, I had to take a Japanese placement exam – I ended up being placed into first year graduate Japanese. Everyone in the class had spent some time in Japan and most of them were just starting their Ph.D. programs, so it was a bit intimidating. There was actually no new Japanese being taught – we spent time reading and analyzing Japanese-language newspaper articles, technical papers, and political essays. You were on your own for learning any unknown words or kanji – this was essentially pre-Internet, so it was a bit of a challenge. The results of my placement test gave me credit for the first three years of undergraduate Japanese – to complete my major, I just needed to take the three quarters of first year graduate Japanese plus 9 other classes within the Asian Languages Department. I ended up taking a year-long Japanese history track, a modern Japanese literature course, two quarters of classical Japanese, a Japanese religion class, a Japanese art class, a year-long track of 1st year Mandarin Chinese, and a Chinese calligraphy class.
Since graduating from Stanford, I have worked as an air quality engineer for environmental consulting companies (Radian International from 1994 to 2000 and Eastern Research Group, Inc. from 2000 to the present). I have had very minimal professional use of my Japanese – my one and only business trip to Japan was in September 2019 where I assisted in the inspection of Japanese facilities in Saitama and Kumamoto which imported small nonroad engines into the United States.
Even though I have not had an opportunity to use my Japanese skills much in my professional career, I have continued extensive Japanese reading and education on my own, including Japanese literature, Japanese history, Japanese religion, Japanese geography, Japanese names – all of which have ultimately helped me with Japanese family history research.
What motivates you to offer these classes?
There are probably a number of motivating factors behind me offering these classes, but one of the main ones is the belief that we are all to some degree a product of the generations that came before us.
On a personal level, I feel a kinship with the Japanese diaspora – although I am an obvious outsider, part of my heritage also came from somewhere else. My father was born in Amsterdam in June 1940 just a couple of weeks after the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. Under the sponsorship of the Northside Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee, my father immigrated to the United States in March 1957 along with his mother, his stepfather, and his two sisters. My father just turned 82 and is currently living in Oregon. His immigration was a major life event for him and it occurred only 12 years before I was born.
Similarly, emigration from Japan was a major life event for the issei (1st generation) immigrants, but this major life event is receding further and further into the past. Many of the people that are interested in researching their Japanese family history are sansei (3rd generation) – this is the generation that vaguely remembers their ojiichan and obaachan but could scarcely communicate with them because of the language barrier. I have encountered gosei (5th generation) and even rokusei (6th generation) who are interested in their Japanese family history, even though they are quite separated from it.
What do you teach specifically?
As an outsider, I really have no standing from which to tell people of Japanese ancestry how they should research their Japanese family history. However, barring any preserved family records or known relatives living in Japan, requesting all possible Japanese koseki records from Japanese municipal offices is THE fundamental first step for researching Japanese family history. It is actually also the first step for Japanese nationals living in Japan. Without requesting koseki, most people will only be able to trace back to the immigration port of entry and no further.
Japan does NOT maintain individual birth, marriage, or death certificates. Instead, Japan maintains 戸籍 (koseki) family registers. The Japanese koseki system was established in 1872 soon after the 明治維新 (Meiji Restoration) in an effort to modernize and Westernize. Births, marriages, deaths, adoptions, etc. were all maintained at the household-level. In some cases, as many as six generations (great-grandparents through grandchildren) may be listed in one koseki document.
I specifically teach people how they can request their own ancestors’ koseki documents. It is possible to hire Japanese genealogical researchers at the expense of thousands of dollars – but you do not need to do this. One can request their own documents which, in my opinion, provides a much larger sense of ownership.
There are two main things required when requesting koseki documents. The first thing is proof of direct (blood or adoptive) relationship through official or quasi-official documents. The second thing is identification of the issei immigrant’s 本籍地 (honsekichi) (essentially their ancestral village). I teach people how to obtain these two things. There seems to be an inordinate amount of mystery associated with koseki requests – in my classes, I try to dispel this mystery.
I have taught a few ancillary topics as well, including how to read/decipher the Japanese-language koseki, how to research immigration records and ship manifests, Japanese geography, but these all tie back into requesting koseki documents.
Who participates in your classes? Who else would benefit from participating?
Anyone with Japanese ancestry would benefit from my classes.
The largest number of people are sansei (3rd generation), but there have been some young gosei (5th generation) and rokusei (6th generation). There have also been a couple of nisei (2nd generation) in their late 80s who have also attended with their children and grandchildren. As expected, the largest groups of attendees have been from California and Hawaii, but sometimes there are large groups from other places. One time, out of a class of 100, there were 6 people from Minnesota and another 5 from Michigan. In another class, over 35 of the registrants were from Canada. I typically hold the class at 3 pm Pacific Time on Sunday afternoons, which translates to 6 pm Eastern Time and noon/1 pm Hawaii Time, but I occasionally will have people attend from Japan at 7 am Monday morning local time, as well as from England, Spain, and other places in Europe. There was someone who even attended the class from Finland at 1 am local time.
Most people are there for their own Japanese lines, but there will sometimes be spouses attending. There have been a number of people who were born in Japan but were adopted by American families (some of Japanese ancestry, some not) and they are now looking for their biological parents. There are even some people who just recently discovered that they have Japanese ancestry – a DNA test unexpectedly reveals that one of their grandparents was Japanese.
What successes have there been?
The most surprising thing to me over the last couple of years is how successful the koseki requests are. The success rate is definitely in excess of 95 percent and probably closer to 98 percent. Several contributing factors include fairly recent and complete immigration records, as well as a wide diversity of surnames compared to most other places of emigration. Having also helped various non-Japanese people with their family history, I can guarantee that identifying the specific John Sullivan from Ireland or Johann Schmitt from Germany is not a particularly easy task. Japanese surnames are easier to identify in the immigration records.
The only people of Japanese ancestry that have had difficulty obtaining koseki documents are those with ancestors who immigrated through a third country (e.g., China, Mexico), who illegally entered the country (e.g., jumping ship, using some sort of alias), failed to regularly check in with the Japanese consulate, or had incorrect information recorded.
The biggest success probably has been people who knew nothing about their ancestors before the issei immigrants who have gone on to obtain multiple koseki documents in spite of only being able to carve out 10-15 minutes out of a busy daily schedule.
At the basic level, I hope that participants understand that requesting koseki documents is not some arduous task that requires superhuman abilities and/or lottery winner luck. I believe that almost everyone can successfully request documents.
Tell us about your next class and where can people learn more about participating in the future?
The next Zoom class will be held on Sunday, July 17th at 3 pm Pacific Time. It is actually going to be a 90-minute “open mic” Japanese family history Q&A session; there will likely be a more traditional koseki-related class sometime in August.
Day of class registration is NOT accepted. Pre-registration is required at the following link.
I also run a Japanese Family Facebook page where I announce the upcoming class. See
Also, people are welcome to contact me via email at marty_wolf <at > stanfordalumni.org with questions.
Finally, if you cannot wait for my next class, I prepared some on-line class sessions as part of the RootsTech 2022 virtual family history conference hosted by Family Search. A 3-session series discussing koseki requests (total run time of 44 minutes) is available. As well as a more advanced 3-session series discussing how to read/decipher koseki documents (total run time of 47 minutes).
Comments