Chronicle + Family Tree

What you get

The Family Chronicle is a book on the documented story of the families who carried your surname in and around your ancestral village.

• Everything in the Koseki Family Tree and the Family Chronicle, with your family tree woven into the Chronicle
• Your own line from your registers (to the 1870s–80s), and the older families of your name from the records that survive
• Chronicle + Family Tree also includes a short life story of every person on your family tree, however many there are, researched in local records. Where the records say little about someone, that person's story is short. Each life story takes its own research, so Chronicle + Family Tree costs more than the Koseki Family Tree and the Family Chronicle bought separately.
• Format: A4 PDF; prints on US Letter with "fit to page"
• Length: longer than the Family Chronicle alone. It depends on how many records survive for your name in the village and how many people are on the tree; we confirm it in our order confirmation email.
• Printed and hardbound copies are available on request. Email us for a quote, since shipping varies by country.

What you need to provide

• A completed Roots Report ($390), ordered and paid for first.
• Clear photos or scans of your koseki registers. One register is one certified document from the city office, however many pages it has.
• Up to 6 registers are included; each additional register is +$80, as with the Koseki Family Tree.
• 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 Chronicle + Family Tree together come to $4,890 for the PDF.
• You pay for the Chronicle + Family Tree only after we confirm that your koseki images are readable.
• If the Report shows too few records 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 with your koseki: the Family Chronicle and the Koseki Family Tree together. It comes after a Roots Report (Step 2). Compare all services at a glance.

See a sample

The Chronicle + Family Tree combines two services that each have a full public sample. The family in the samples is fictional; the places, records and research are real.

Sample Family ChronicleSample Koseki Family Tree