"deleted" children in Japan

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rodney Van Meter <rdv () sfc wide ad jp>
Date: May 30, 2007 10:44:22 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: "deleted" children in Japan

Dave,

I'm trying not to wear out my welcome on IP, but if you wish...

This tidbit bothers me because it speaks to the entire future of our
history in the world in which "If Google can't find it, it doesn't
exist."

A little background: in Japan, you don't have a birth certificate.  Each
family has a family registry, and children who are born are entered into
the registry.  I think the same holds for proof of marriage.  Generally,
the registry has a family name on it (just one -- making it difficult
for women to keep their maiden names, but that's not the point here) and
a head of household.  Then underneath that are the members of the
household -- wife and kids.  Normally, kids stay on their parents'
registry until they marry or the parents die.  When you marry, you move
off your parents' registry and start your own.  You do your registration
at the city office, but it's a national registry run by the Justice
Department.

In the normal progress of things, of course, the last entry for each
child is a notation that they moved off of this registry and onto
another one.  But if a child dies, then a notation is made of that fact.

An article in yesterday's Daily Yomiuri
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/culture/20070530TDY02009.htm
says that they are still in the process of digitizing the registry, and
that some deceased children are being "deleted" in the process, simply
to keep down the amount of data input work (which undoubtedly has to be
done by hand).

While it certainly makes sense to prioritize the digitization of
currently-active families, as opposed to the historical records of
deceased grandparents whose registers consist of no one alive, this
choice has the effect of creating an apparently complete registry of an
active family that portrays an inaccurate picture of the family history.

> From the article:

According to the [Justice] ministry, the names of family members who
died before the digitization have been included on the original hard
copy of the family registry as one who has been "removed." But the
names, the ministry said, have been stricken from the data files.

The reasoning behind this was an attempt to reduce the data input into
the system--by even only a bit--during the digitization process. Family
members who died following the move of data files are still represented
in the electronic registers.

"You've got it backward if you think digitizing family registers will
result in more work," a ministry official said. "Even if the name of the
deceased disappears from the data, you can still see it on the original,
so it isn't a problem."

---

"isn't a problem"!  A hundred years from now no one will know that the
families in question ever *had* children.  Looking at a particular
digital record, you wouldn't even know to *ask* to see the original hard
copy.  Statistics on births and deaths from various causes will no doubt
be skewed, let alone the impact on geneology.

While it seems likely that eventually they will get around to digitizing
historical records, this particular gap in the data seems unlikely to be
fixed -- or even fixABLE, without a second by-hand check of every
registry comparing the original hard copy with the digitized version.

There are gaps in my family history where e.g. the courthouse holding
birth certificates burned down.  But at least we *know* that there are
gaps.

Is this a bigger loss than, oh, say, the burning of the library at
Alexandria, or the one at Bukhara (~650 and again 1920), or the burning
of Mayan texts by the Spanish?  Nah.  But I mourn the loss of every
bit(!) of our collective history.

                --Rod




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