Here It Is: The New JKC Appendix Export Pedigree

So as everyone is now well aware, as of January 1st, 2022, the Japan Kennel Club no longer gives a full registration to dogs being transferred from NIPPO and other Nihon Ken registries. They are registered to the APPENDIX, where they and their progeny will stay for 3 generations. Below I have included a sample for everyone to see what kind of a pedigree you receive when you export a dog that has a JKC APPENDIX pedigree.




As you can see, all ancestors have their names and kennels included, but no other information. This does create a serious issue in that due to the use of Japanese kanji by Japanese kennels, multiple dogs can have the exact same name. 

For example: 
百合号 安房山犬荘
ゆり号 安房山犬荘
友里号 安房山犬荘
由梨号 安房山犬荘
ユリ号 安房山犬荘

All the above names are read 'Yuri Go Awa Yamainu Sou' (and I could give you at least 10 more ways to write the same name). You can see how this could be a problem for tracking actual parentage to understand how closely related dogs are, which is a major reason to have a pedigree in the first place, isn't it? 

Another change that has just been made by the JKC registration department is that Japanese dog names will now be translated into English using the Hepburn System (hebonshiki) rather than the previous system which I believe was Word Processor Type (wa-puroshiki). Personally I preferred the previous system, because it is an exact way to translate the names into English. In the same way that having registration numbers to identify dogs is important, it is also important for names to be uniform, and for there to be no misunderstandings about which dog is being identified by a name.

For example:
ゆり号 安房山犬荘 old style: Yuri Go Awa Yamainu Sou
ゆり号 安房山犬荘 new style: Yuri Go Awa Yamainu So

While this may not seem problematic, I can see two large possible problems looming. Dogs previously in the database will retain their registration names using the previous method of romanization. So, a dog that was already in the database, but is entered again as an ancestor of a newly registered APPENDIX dog, could be registered in the JKC database with two separate names/identities. And what will be even more confusing is the following example, and the reason I prefer the old method:

有利号 安房山犬荘 old style: Yuuri Go Awa Yamainu Sou
有利号 安房山犬荘 new style: Yuri Go Awa Yamainu So

ゆ and 有(ゆう) will both end up being translated as 'yu' instead of as 'yu' and 'yuu'

There are actually multiple examples in the above pedigree of this issue. Not including the change in the suffix 'sou' becoming 'so', out of 14 dogs, there are 9 with very easily recognizable potential for this kind of misidentification (ie 'ryu' instead of 'ryuu')

As with the Appendix pedigree change, everything was decided before most of us had ever heard that there was a change coming. Once things like this are done, it is just about impossible to backtrack. We will have to figure out ways to work within the new system, so feel free to use this pedigree as a sample to contact your respective kennel clubs about how they will manage this new export pedigree (if at all). It does make the privately run online breed databases even more important than they were before, as they may soon be the only way to track parentage correctly and efficiently.



 

Comments

  1. The info here is so handy, thank you!
    Does this make the Nihon Ken Database the most complete pedigree database moving forward?

    ReplyDelete

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