Kawakami Family History

Japanese: written 川上 ‘above the river’. It is found throughout Japan and the Ryūkyū Islands. Two families from villages of that name in Iwami (now part of Shimane prefecture) and Shimotsuke (now Tochigi prefecture) descend from the Sasaki and northern Fujiwara respectively.

Another samurai family is of Satsuma (now Kagoshima prefecture). The characters are sometimes pronounced Kawanoe or Kawaue. Listed in the Shinsen shōjiroku.

A less common rendering is 川神 ‘river deity’.