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In Japan, finding one's roots is no problem

Special Correspondent

Professor Noboru Karashima

Chennai: Tracing one's roots in some detail beyond 10 or even five generations may be difficult for many, but not for Professor Noboru Karashima. The respected Japanese scholar specialising in Indian studies says he has records of his ancestors, including mythological ancestors, going back 74 generations, a timeline that stretches to the days of Confucius in the fifth century B.C.

Maintaining detailed family records is a cultural phenomenon in East Asian societies such as Korea, China and Japan, Professor Karashima says, though extensively documented family trees such as his own are less common.

The tradition of keeping detailed family information is well known in early Buddhist temples. The practice has endured through the shogun and feudal eras and transformed into a more modern system since the Meiji restoration in the late 19th Century. The family registry system continues to this day as the ``Koseki,'' which provides details of all births, deaths, marriages, divorces and sometimes unflattering references to a brush with the law. While many young Japanese competing for success in their careers have little time to discover their ancestry, they become interested in the family tree in middle age or upon retirement and begin to seek information on their forefathers, says Professor Karashima, who is Professor of Indian Studies, Taisho University. Analysing his own ancestry, he says: ``It seems my family originally came from Korea. We cannot really rely on records available until the 8th century, when one of my ancestors clearly appears in Japanese history.''

Personal details

While very minute personal details are stored in the Japanese registry system by governmental authority, access to the information is generally available only to members of the family concerned. The bona fides of the applicant are verified before making the record available for study, he says. In more recent times, some Japanese local agencies have begun to issue citizen identification numbers as a record of residence for practical purposes such as issue of licences and passports, as opposed to the tradition of the family register that is now part of law.

Cites Vedas

Contrasting the East Asian practice with cultures of South Asia, Professor Karashima observes that the Hindu tradition has created documents with high conceptual and literary value - he cites the Vedas and Puranas as examples — but not enough documentary detail in a historical sense. In China, however, it has been the tradition for dynasties to exhaustively document their rule. Each dynasty also had to produce a record of its predecessor to serve as a comparison. The records were, therefore, primarily factual.

The Japanese custom of preserving family information began with religious involvement as in Buddhist temples.

It has withstood conflicts between religions, although some documents were inevitably damaged in arson and wartime bombing. Shinto and Buddhist beliefs were historically in conflict, but both coexist today. The Japanese visit Shinto shrines during auspicious events, including the New Year, and Buddhist centres for funerals and death anniversaries.

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