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Step 3

Family Chronicle

The story of your family name in its village, as a book. For families who want the whole documented story of their name in the village, as one book, after a Roots Report.

$2,900 PDF
Delivery: About 2 months from the day you pay for the Chronicle (you order it after your Roots Report is delivered)

What you get

  • The story of your family name in its village as one continuous book, built from local histories, old documents and village records
  • Original sources and images shown chapter by chapter
  • Chart of the families found in the records, maps, timeline and illustrated scenes (AI-generated, and labeled as such)
  • The Report's findings are built into the Chronicle
  • The book follows the families of your name in Japan, up to the time your ancestors left the village. Their lives after emigrating are not part of it, and we do not offer that as a separate service. Records of life abroad, such as wartime incarceration files, are held by national archives in the US and Canada and by Nikkei organizations such as Densho; our work is the records in Japan.
  • Format: A4 PDF of usually 40–60 pages; prints on US Letter with "fit to page"
  • The length depends on how many records survive for your name in the village; we confirm it in our order confirmation email.
  • Hardbound copies: $1,000 for 5 copies, with shipping extra (it varies by country). Email us to order, and we confirm the shipping cost before you pay.
The book follows the families of your name in and around your ancestral village: the wider family your own line belongs to. Each chapter says how closely they connect to your direct ancestors. It tells the documented story of the families who carried your surname there, and says how strong the evidence is for each link. A koseki goes back to the 1886 registers, which often name ancestors born in the early 1800s. Links to the older families of the name rest mostly on place and distribution, so our charts draw them as a dotted line.

Most of the people named in a Chronicle are village headmen (hereditary local officials) and local warriors, because they are the ones the old records name. That does not leave farming families out. Go back to the medieval period, and the families of your name often appear among them. In those centuries the line between warrior and farmer was far less sharp than it later became: when war came, farmers took up arms too. Where the records name no one from your own household, we write about the village your ancestors lived in. If too little survives for a book, the Roots Report tells you so first.

What you need to provide

  • A completed Roots Report ($390), ordered and paid for first. It shows whether enough records survive for a book.
  • If you have them, anything your family has handed down: stories and traditions (for example, "our family were samurai" or "we came from the castle town"), the family crest, names and dates of ancestors you know, your family's Buddhist school or temple, and photos of gravestones, memorial tablets or old papers. None of these is required. Write the stories in your message or by email; for photos, we send you a private upload code. We compare each story with the records, and the book says which ones the records support, which they contradict, and which they cannot settle either way (stories of samurai ancestry are often in the last group).

Price and payment

  • The Report and the Chronicle together come to $3,290 for the PDF.
  • You pay for the Chronicle after your Roots Report is delivered.
  • If too few records survive for a book, we tell you so, and you need not buy anything more.
  • Prices are in US dollars and include all our fees for the PDF.
  • Delivery times are estimates, not guarantees. Every record gets the care it needs, so if we expect a delay, we will let you know by email.

How it fits with our other services

This is Step 3, the book. It comes after a Roots Report (Step 2). Compare all services at a glance.

Before thisRoots Report ($390) — Required first. The Roots Report establishes which records survive for your ancestral village: local histories, temple records and old documents.
After thisChronicle + Family Tree ($4,500) — Want your koseki family tree in the same book? Chronicle + Family Tree adds it (this needs your koseki registers), with a short life story of each person.

See a sample

Every service has a full public sample (Chronicle + Family Tree shares the Family Chronicle and Koseki Family Tree samples). The family in the sample is fictional; the places, records and research are real.

Read the sample on the webDownload the sample as delivered (PDF, 5.3 MB)

Family Chronicle — $2,900. Tell us about your family, and we reply by email within a week.

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