Grafting the Family Tree

The Shirakis of Japan chose an unusual way to save the family name from extinction several centuries ago.

This particular family had no children, yet it was still very important to them to carry on the name of Shiraki.

So they did something somewhat unorthodox, at the time. Since they had no children, they arranged for a marriage between a second family with only a daughter and a third family with a second-born son.

In return for arranging this marriage, the families of the young couple agreed to take on and perpetuate the priests' family name of Shiraki. [Link]

The Battle of Iwo To?

Here's more proof that everything I know about history is wrong. After sixty-something years of letting it be called "Iwo Jima," the Japanese are finally changing the famous island's name back to Iwo To.

The new name in Japanese looks and means the same as Iwo Jima - or Sulfur Island - but sounds different, the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute said.

Before the war, however, the volcanic island was known as Iwo To by the 1,000 or so civilians who lived there.

They were evacuated in 1944 as U.S. forces advanced across the Pacific. Some Japanese navy officers who moved in to fortify the island mistakenly called it Iwo Jima, and the name stuck. [Link]

Not a Fly-By-Night Company

A Japanese temple-building company called Kongo Gumi is going out of business. They've been in operation since 578 AD.

Its last president, Masakazu Kongo, was the 40th member of the family to lead the company. He has cited the company's flexibility in selecting leaders as a key factor in its longevity. Specifically, rather than always handing reins to the oldest son, Kongo Gumi chose the son who best exhibited the health, responsibility, and talent for the job. Furthermore, it wasn't always a son. The 38th Kongo to lead the company was Masakazu's grandmother. [Link, via Boing Boing]

A Genetic Link in the Ink

If you ever get around to publishing your family history, be sure to include your "source material."

Tokyo-based Ko-sin Printing has developed a printing process that allows authors to add a more personal touch to their printed works by using ink that includes their DNA.

Ko-sin also claims it is possible to extract genetic information from materials printed using this process. When the company sent a sample page to a DNA laboratory, the lab technicians were able to isolate and extract the DNA from the page. [Link, via Neatorama]

Keeping the Family Close

Some Japanese who have moved to urban areas have found it hard to leave their rural pasts behind. So they're inviting their ancestors to join them.

Some of those interested in reburial note that they have no intention of returning to their countryside birthplaces after living in the city for more than 40 years.

Others comment that they want to take the burden off relatives who have had to care for their family graves. And then there is the expense; some pensioners simply cannot afford the cost of making an overnight trip to a countryside cemetery. [Link]

Man Mistakes Corpse For Father

Tomokazu Mihashi is on trial in Japan for leaving his father's body in their apartment for eight months after his death last March. Except it wasn't his father.

Mihashi said he didn't know that the victim was not his real father until the DNA test was carried out on the body after his arrest.

"I was shocked (when I heard the result)," he said.

In the opening hearing on Thursday, public prosecutors changed their description of Mihashi's father from "real father" to "father as listed on the family register," based on the result of the DNA test. [Link]

The House Bandleader of the Rising Sun

Without John William Fenton, the Japanese would have nothing to sing before baseball games. The bandmaster was deployed with a British regiment in Japan in 1868, and wound up introducing his hosts to the two most important institutions yet devised by the West: the brass band and the national anthem.

The first Kimi Ga Yo anthem was performed before the Emperor in 1870. Fenton's melody proved so popular that it was discarded six years later, replaced by the Japanese-written tune still in use. It is among the shortest national anthems, lasting all of seven seconds, I believe.

Now the Japanese want to recognize Fenton for his contributions to Japanese culture, if only they can locate his final abode.

The Scotsman has discovered that after leaving Japan in 1877, the Irish-born bandmaster moved to Angus.

Documents at Scotland's Register Office show he was 50 in 1881 and lived at 18 George Street in Montrose.

He is described as a "bandmaster pensioner", married to Philadelphia-born Jessie Pilkington, then 47.

His family also included daughters Jessie Woods, 17, and ten-year-old Maria Corser born in Miaaouei Tabo, Japan.

His name is last recorded in 1883 when he appears to have left a teaching post with the army in Scotland.

However, no death certificate has been found so far and the Japanese are keen to locate his grave and track down any living relatives or descendants, whom they hope to invite to Japan. [Link]

So, if you happen to have John William Fenton lurking in your family tree, speak up. You might just score a free trip to Japan, accompanied by endless renditions of a 19th-century ode to Japanese imperialism. On the bright side, you'll be force-fed raw fish.

(Thanks, Fred!)
[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

A Genealogy of Mythic Proportions

Professor Noboru Karashima puts the rest of us to shame.

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. [Link (emphasis mine)]

Says Professor Karashima, "We cannot really rely on records available until the 8th century, when one of my ancestors clearly appears in Japanese history."

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

A Dedicated Hakamaira

From the Japan Times of June 19, 2005:

Tomb raver

By SETSUKO KAMIYA
Staff writer

Teenage years are often a time of confusion. But for one 37-year-old who goes by the pen name Kajipon Maruko Zangetsu, it was a time of torment due to family problems and a majorly broken heart.

To escape his painful reality, Kajipon sought refuge in the world of literature and art. He read and read, from Osamu Dazai to Goethe, and absorbed himself in the music of Beethoven and Mozart.

[snip]

At age 19, by which time he was an out-and-out arts junkie, Kajipon flew to Leningrad in the U.S.S.R. (now St. Petersburg in Russia) to visit the grave of the writer Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski, whose "Crime and Punishment" had inspired him. "I wanted to thank him in person for saving my soul," Kajipon said.

But Dostoevski literally changed his life.

"As I stood before his grave, his writings became so vibrant. It felt as if he was talking to me," Kajipon recalled. "Until then, he was just a name, but his existence in this world suddenly felt so real."

Shocked but delighted by this realization, Kajipon then hit on an idea that has steered his life ever since. "If this happened with Dostoevski," he explained, "I thought that the same thing must occur with Soseki and Shakespeare. There was no way that I wouldn't visit them, too."

So it was that Kajipon became a pilgrim -- or what he calls a "hakamaira," a word he invented by combining the Japanese word hakamairi (grave visit) with the sound of the English suffix "er" to signify someone who visits graves.

And certainly he's nothing if not a devoted hakamaira, as, since that first pilgrimage in 1987, he has visited the graves of 600 "heroes and heroines" in 40 different countries.

[snip]

[H]e makes it a strict rule not to visit the grave of anyone whose works he is not familiar with -- or hasn't been impressed by. "This isn't sightseeing; that would be very rude," he insists.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]