You will understand that relationship terms (zokugara, 続柄) are important in ancestry research.

When you go to a city or town office to request removed family registers (joseki-bo, 除籍簿), the application form has a field for the relationship to the person named in the register. Most people know the terms for great-grandparents (sōsofubo, 曾祖父母) and great-great-grandparents (kōsofubo, 高祖父母), but what should you write for generations further back? There is no fixed term for generations before the great-great-grandparents, but it is best to call the parents of the great-great-grandparents “5th-generation grandparents” (5世祖父母), and their parents “6th-generation grandparents” (6世祖父母). (The count starts from the requester: parents are the 1st generation, grandparents the 2nd, great-grandparents the 3rd and great-great-grandparents the 4th.) Terms for collateral relatives such as nephews and nieces, and for descendants (direct-line descendants) such as jōson (仍孫) and unson (雲孫), are omitted here. But these “○th-generation grandparents” terms are required on the application when you request removed family registers, and you will use them fairly often when you contact and explain things to the people you are researching, so be sure to remember them.

“Jitsu ○○ nan,” “○○ no jo”: relationship notations to watch for in keifu and research books

When you read keifu (系譜) and other old documents, or research books, there are notations for relationships that you should be careful about.

In keifu you will find entries such as “○○ nan” (○○男) or “○○ jo” (○○女). These mean “the son of ○○” and “the daughter of ○○.” You might mistake them for names in which 男 or 女 is part of a personal name, like “Hideo” (英男) or “Uneme” (采女), but they are not.

In the past, middle dots and the particle “no” were rarely written, so these entries are easy to misread.

There are also entries such as “○○ ga nan” (○○が男) and “○○ no jo” (○○の女). These too mean son and daughter, not a lover or a mistress.

When quoting an old document, it cannot be helped. But authors of research books who have become thoroughly used to this style also write “○○ nan” and the like, which is confusing. If you are going to record your ancestors from now on, write personal names and relationships separately and clearly so that your descendants do not misunderstand. In particular, “jinan” (次男, second son) and “sannan” (三男, third son) can easily be confused with the given names “Tsugio” and “Mitsuo,” so give up the complacent thought that relatives who are alive today will be able to read them anyway, and write so that descendants 100 years from now can read them. If the birth order and sex are known, writing them together, as in “second child = second son” (第二子＝次男), helps avoid misreading.

There is also a notation “jitsu ○○○○ nan” (実〇〇〇〇男). It is written in the entry of an adopted child who has been adopted, and means “the birth parent is ○○○○, and this is the son.” For an adopted daughter, “jitsu ○○○○ jo” (実〇〇〇〇女) is written in the same way. When 実 is the first character of a family name, it is confusing, so be careful. Note, however, that this 実 (jitsu) refers to a birth-parent relationship as recorded in the document; it does not confirm that there is a genetic blood tie.

Relationships in removed family registers

In removed family registers from before the war, when “eldest son” (長男) or “grandmother” (祖母) is written without any explanation, it is the relationship with the head of the household (koshu, 戸主) as the reference person (基準者, the person himself or herself).

Direct line and collateral line

As we have mentioned many times in other articles, “direct line” (直系, chokkei) and “collateral line” (傍系, bōkei) are often misused.

The direct line means, starting from a given person, that person’s parent, the parent’s parent, the parent’s parent’s parent, and so on, or the person’s descendants. It does not mean the head family (honke, 本家).

The collateral line means, for a given person (the reference person, 基準者), the person’s brothers and sisters and their descendants, and the brothers and sisters of the person’s direct-line ancestors and their descendants, excluding those who belong to the direct line. It does not mean a branch family (bunke, 分家). Whether someone is in the direct line or the collateral line is decided by the relationship to the reference person. For example, seen from a member of a branch family, the head of the head family is in the collateral line if he is that person’s elder brother, and in the direct line if he is that person’s father.

Head family (honke, 本家) and branch family (bunke, 分家) are terms for the relationship between lineages (kakei, 家系): a branch family is a lineage that split directly from another lineage, and the head family is the lineage it split from. This is a different concept from the direct line and the collateral line. When dealing with a clan or a large kin group, the lineage that has carried on the rites since the founder of the clan or of the group is called chakuryū (嫡流), and the groups of lineages with different family names that branched off from a younger son (shoshi, 庶子) are called shoryū (庶流); but these are not other words for the head family and the branch family.

If you have this misunderstanding, you will not be able to communicate with the staff at the city or town office when you request removed family registers.