For Japanese American families — Sansei · Yonsei · Gosei

Your grandfather's name
is still in Japan.

In a government office in Japan, a handwritten register has been quietly keeping your family's record — births, marriages, departures — for more than 150 years. We find it. We translate it. We return it to your family, where it belongs.

Private engagements from USD 10,000  ·  Complimentary initial consultation  ·  Conducted by licensed Japanese legal professionals

The story begins below ↓

How it usually begins

It usually begins with a trunk.

A parent passes. A house is cleared. And in the back of a garage, a leather trunk no one remembers opening: letters addressed in vertical brush calligraphy. Photographs of strangers standing before a farmhouse that is nowhere in America. A small silk charm from a shrine no one can name.

A small keepsake case among mimosa flowers
The keepsakes are rarely grand — a small case, some letters, a charm.

You are holding a letter written to your own family — and you cannot read a single character.

Where exactly was he born? Why did he leave? What did the war take, and what did the silence afterward bury? Who stayed behind in Japan — and who, today, still shares his blood?

The people who could have answered are gone. In America, the paper trail thins out at the internment years and disappears at the pier.

But on the other side of the Pacific, the record kept going.

Japan's family registry — the koseki

A record has been waiting for you in Japan.

Since 1872, Japan has recorded every birth, marriage, adoption, and death — family by family, village by village — in a single continuous system called the koseki. It is arguably the most complete genealogical record on earth.

Your family has a page in it. Even after your ancestor sailed for America, even through war and internment, the registry in his home village kept his name — written by hand, in ink, by clerks who never knew the story they were preserving.

These registers are not online, and they are not public. Access is strictly regulated by Japanese law, and the prewar volumes are handwritten in classical Japanese that even most native speakers cannot comfortably read. This is precisely the work of a judicial scrivener: obtaining the records lawfully, reading them accurately, and turning them back into a family's story.

150+ yrs of continuous, government-kept family records since 1872
5+ gens research routinely reaches the early Meiji era — with clues that can point into the Edo period
1page belongs to your family — waiting in a municipal office in Japan

The deliverable

Not a printout. A family archive.

The Original Records

Certified copies of your family's koseki registers, obtained lawfully from municipal offices across Japan — the actual government documents that carry your ancestors' names.

English Translations

Every register translated in full — name by name, date by date, notation by notation — so that what a clerk wrote in 1898 can be read aloud at your table.

The Family Tree

Your complete direct line, compiled in English and Japanese and presented as an archival volume — made to be framed, shelved, and handed down.

The Research Narrative

A written account of what we found and what it means: the village, the household, the departures and returns — your family's story, documented and sourced.

For families who want to go further

Ancestral Village Dossier

Field research in your family's hometown — the temple, the graves, the old addresses — with photographs of the places your records describe.

Living Relatives

Where relatives can be identified from your family's own registers — and only with your consent — respectful first contact by letter, in Japanese.

The Heritage Visit

When you are ready to stand where your grandfather stood, we prepare the ground — introductions and an itinerary built on your own documents.

The Great Torii of Itsukushima Shrine at sunset, Hiroshima
The Great Torii of Itsukushima, Hiroshima — on the same waters as our office in Otake.

The form of the deliverable

Five generations, two languages.

Below: the house of Tokugawa Ieyasu — the family of the shoguns — rendered in the bilingual form we use for client trees. Every name in kanji and in English, every line documented. Yours is built the same way, from your own certified registers.

Sample family tree — the house of Tokugawa Ieyasu, five generations, kanji and English I II III IV V 松平 清康 Matsudaira Kiyoyasu 1511–1535 松平 広忠 Matsudaira Hirotada 1526–1549 於大の方 Odai no Kata 1528–1602 初代将軍 · FIRST SHŌGUN 徳川 家康 Tokugawa Ieyasu 1543–1616 築山殿 Tsukiyama-dono ?–1579 西郷局 Saigō no Tsubone 1552–1589 松平 信康 Matsudaira Nobuyasu 1559–1579 亀姫 Kamehime 1560–1625 結城 秀康 Yūki Hideyasu 1574–1607 徳川 秀忠 Tokugawa Hidetada 1579–1632 二代将軍 · SECOND SHŌGUN 江 Gō 1573–1626 千姫 Senhime 1597–1666 徳川 家光 Tokugawa Iemitsu 1604–1651 三代将軍 · THIRD SHŌGUN Marriage · 婚姻 Parent & child · 親子

Prepared from public historical records, for demonstration of form only — simplified for display. An actual client tree, compiled from certified koseki registers, carries far more information — full dates of birth, marriage, and death, registered domiciles, adoptions, and branch lines — and is correspondingly more complex. However far back yours reaches, it takes this same shape: every name in both languages, every line accounted for.

The process

From one email to a family archive.

  1. 01

    Private Consultation

    Write to us in English. Tell us what you know — even if it is only a name and “somewhere near Hiroshima.” Complimentary and confidential.

  2. 02

    Assessment & Proposal

    We evaluate your clues — names, approximate hometown, emigration year, documents you hold — and send a written proposal with a fixed fee. You commit to nothing until you sign.

  3. 03

    Engagement

    A bilingual service agreement puts everything in writing: scope, fee, timeline, confidentiality.

  4. 04

    The Research

    We obtain and read the registers — office by office, generation by generation. Complex cases may include field research in Japan, always agreed with you in advance. Most engagements run from six months to about a year, depending on the case — with progress reports along the way.

  5. 05

    The Delivery

    Records, translations, family tree, narrative — your family's archive, delivered to your door.

Hiroshi Takahashi speaking about Japanese roots research

Hiroshi Takahashi — Judicial Scrivener, Co-Principal of Kakeru Legal Office

Who conducts your research

A legal professional who reads the old registers for a living.

Hiroshi Takahashi has been a licensed judicial scrivener (shiho-shoshi) since 2010 and is a co-principal of Kakeru Legal Office in Hiroshima Prefecture. His practice is built on inheritance and family registry law — work in which tracing every branch of a family is not a hobby but a legal requirement, and in which a single case can require reading the registers of more than one hundred heirs.

It was inside that work that this service began. In record after record, he kept meeting the same quiet story: a young name, a village address, and a notation — emigrated to America. He began to wonder who those young people became, and who their grandchildren are now.

This is the answer: a research practice devoted to giving those grandchildren their story back — carried out by the licensed professionals of Kakeru Legal Office, under the duties the law places on them.

  • Licensed Judicial Scrivener (Shiho-shoshi), registered 2010
  • Co-Principal, Kakeru Legal Office — Otake City, Hiroshima, Japan
  • Specialties: family registry research, inheritance, family law, genealogy
  • Author, Finding Your Japanese Roots (Kakeru Legal Publishing)
Finding Your Japanese Roots — book cover

The book

We wrote the book on it — literally.

Finding Your Japanese Roots: A Japanese Family Registry and Genealogy Guide for Japanese Americans follows Jake, a third-generation Japanese American in San Jose, from the moment he opens his late grandfather's trunk to the moment the koseki gives him his family back. Along the way it explains, step by step, exactly how the search works:

  • How the koseki preserves 150 years of your family's history — and how to access it from America
  • How to find your ancestor's registered address from the few clues your family still holds
  • How internment, the 1924 Immigration Act, and citizenship loss shaped what you know — and don't
  • How to read the handwritten prewar registers, and what to do when the trail goes cold

If you would rather make the journey yourself, the book will show you the way — it holds nothing back. And when you want a professional to carry it for you, we are here.

Find It on Amazon Kindle & Paperback · English · Kakeru Legal Publishing

The investment

Engagements begin at USD 10,000.

Most families' research takes one of two shapes. After the complimentary assessment of your clues, we tell you — in writing — which engagement your case calls for and the exact fee, before you commit to anything.

The Standard Engagement from USD 10,000

When your family's line can be traced through the registry system itself — the most common case.

  • All research and lawful record acquisition in Japan
  • Full English translations of every register
  • The complete family tree, in English and Japanese
  • The written research narrative
  • Government fees and delivery to your door

The Extended Engagement from USD 20,000

When the trail calls for work beyond the registers — on the ground, in Japan.

  • Everything in the Standard Engagement
  • Field research in your ancestral hometown — the temple, the graves, the old addresses, photographed and documented
  • Letter-based first contact with relatives identified in the registers, with your consent
  • Preparation for a heritage visit

Fees are payable by international bank transfer or in USDC, the U.S.-dollar digital stablecoin — whichever suits you.

And one promise about promises

We will never promise what the records cannot give. Where a line cannot lawfully or physically be followed further, you receive a complete written account of everything we searched and everything we found — so that you, or the generation after you, can pick up exactly where we stopped.

Questions families ask

Frequently asked questions

How far back can you trace my family?
Japan's registry has operated continuously since 1872. Research routinely reaches the early Meiji era — often five or more generations — and prewar registers sometimes carry clues that point further back, into the Edo period. Every family's records are different, and we will tell you honestly what yours can and cannot show.
I only know my grandfather's name in English. Is that enough?
Often, yes — enough to begin the assessment. A name, an approximate region, an emigration year, an old envelope: each clue narrows the search. Share what you have, and we will tell you honestly whether it is enough to proceed.
Do I need to speak or read Japanese?
No. The entire engagement is conducted in English, and every document you receive comes with an English translation.
Is this legal? How do you access the records?
Koseki access is strictly regulated by Japanese law. As Japanese legal professionals bound by a professional duty of confidentiality, we obtain records only through lawful procedures prepared and executed on your family's behalf. Research is limited to what Japanese law permits — and we consider that limit a feature, not a flaw.
Can you find living relatives in Japan?
Sometimes the registers themselves make this possible. Japanese law limits whose records may be obtained — your own direct line, not every living branch — so we never promise it. Where relatives can be identified from lawfully obtained records, and only with your consent, we make first contact respectfully, by letter, in Japanese. When a reunion happens, it tends to be the part families remember most.
How long does it take?
Most engagements run from six months to about a year, from agreement to delivery, depending on the case — unknown home villages and field research sit at the longer end. We report progress as we go.
What does it cost?
Standard engagements — research through the registry system — begin at USD 10,000. Cases that call for field research in Japan, such as village visits, interviews, or outreach to relatives, typically begin at USD 20,000. After a complimentary assessment you receive a written proposal with the exact fee before you commit to anything.
Do I ever have to travel to Japan?
No. Everything can be done while you stay home. If one day you choose to visit the village yourself, your archive becomes the itinerary — and we can prepare the ground for you.
What happens if you find nothing?
You receive a complete written account of everything we searched and everything we found. In our experience the koseki rarely gives back nothing — but we put the limits in writing before you engage us, not after.

Begin

It starts with a single email.

That is how every one of these stories begins — someone sits down at night and writes what little they know. Write in English. Tell us what you have, and what you have always wondered. We will reply within two business days, Japan time.

hiro-shiho-sho@kiu.biglobe.ne.jp

Helpful to include, if you have it

  • Your grandfather's or grandmother's name — in English, and in Japanese if known
  • The area in Japan they came from, however approximate
  • The year they emigrated, however approximate
  • Documents, photographs, or heirlooms you hold
  • Any contact your family has had with relatives in Japan

None of these are required — families often begin with nothing but a single name.

Every inquiry is held in professional confidence — before, during, and after any engagement.