Step 1

Roots Snapshot

A quick first look. For anyone starting from a family name and a town, village or prefecture.

$29

Delivery: About 3 weeks from payment

What you get

Where your surname is found in Japan, down to the town
Your ancestral village: medieval (8th–16th century) estate (shōen, a landholding owned by a temple, shrine or noble family), Edo-period (1603–1868) lord (daimyo), Meiji-era (1868–1912) village, today's address
Local temples and festivals
A short paragraph on the families of your name in and around the village
Format: PDF of usually 5–8 pages, with a cover and a map (A4; 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.

It covers your surname, its village and the families of that name in the records. It does not prove your own line. Your koseki traces your line back to the 1870s–80s (the oldest registers you can obtain are the 1886 format, though they name people born earlier in the 1800s). The link to the older families of the name usually rests on where the name is found, not on documents, so our charts draw it as a dotted line.

What you need to provide

Your ancestor's surname. Roman letters are fine. If you happen to know it in kanji, add it; it narrows the search, but it is not needed.
The town or village. If you know only the prefecture, we can still begin; for common surnames, this may not narrow down to one town.
That is all. No koseki or other documents are needed.

Price and payment

We confirm the order by email and send a payment link.
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 1, the first look. Families without a koseki go Step 1 → Step 2 (Roots Report) → Step 3 (Family Chronicle); you can start at any step. Compare all services at a glance.

After thisRoots Report ($390) — If you know only the prefecture, the Snapshot shows where in that prefecture your surname is concentrated. The Roots Report then goes deeper into the village, its temples and its records.

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 web Download the sample as delivered (PDF, 0.6 MB)

Roots Snapshot — $29. Tell us about your family, and we reply by email within two business days.

Start with your family name and town — $29