Japan Village Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

Japan

What is in the Collection?
This collection will include records from 709 to 1949. The records are in Japanese. See the For Help Reading These Records section of this article for translation tools.

The collection includes village records from all over Japan. These records include land records, genealogies, religious censuses, and individual family records.

Japanese villages were responsible for several types of records that can be of significant genealogical value, especially when the religious inquisition census records (shumoncho) are unavailable.

These records include the following:


 * Land and property records
 * Tax records (who paid taxes, etc.)
 * Population and status records (a type of census)
 * Lists of people who were drafted into the military
 * Financial records
 * Conservation project records

What Can These Records Tell Me?
Village records may contain the following information:


 * Full name of ancestor
 * Age
 * Date of transaction
 * Occupation
 * Residence
 * Birth date

How Do I Search the Collection?
To search the Village Records, it would be helpful if you knew the following information:


 * Approximate year of birth
 * Name of village

View The Images
View images in this collection by visiting the Browse Page.
 * 1) Select Prefecture
 * 2) Select County or City
 * 3) Select Town or Village
 * 4) Select Record Type
 * 5) Select Title, Volume/Page, and Year to view the images.

For Help Reading These Records
For help with reading these Japanese records, see the following resource:


 * The Genealogy of the Japanese Language
 * Glossary of Japanese Genealogical Terms

What Do I Do Next?

 * Use the age to calculate a birth year.
 * Use dates to track any migration to different areas of Japan.
 * When looking for a person who had a common name, look at all the entries for the name before deciding which is correct.
 * Use other identifying information (such as occupation) to decide if it’s the entry you’re looking for.
 * Titles may be clues to property ownership, occupations, rank, or status within the community.
 * Check for variant spellings of the names.

Citing this Collection
When you copy information from a record, you should list where you found the information; that is, cite your sources. This will help people find the record again and evaluate the reliability of the source. It is also good to keep track of records where you did not find information, including the names of the people you looked for in the records. Citations are available for the collection as a whole and each record or image individually. Collection Citation:

Image Citation: