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This chapter examines the approaches used by sign comparativists to study the histories of sign languages and asks: To what extent does the comparison of modern sign languages inform us about the past? As a focal point for the chapter, we take the Japanese Sign Family, which according to most scholars is a family of sign languages that includes Japanese Sign Language, South Korean Sign Language, and Taiwan Sign Language. The history of the Japanese Sign Family raises key theoretical and methodological issues about the nature of historical relationships among sign languages and how to study those relationships. We contend that historical comparativists must first be historical sociolinguists who study how signing communities have formed, how their languages have emerged and developed, and how those languages have been transmitted across generations. In this way, scholars can provide the critical context necessary for interpreting the results of their historical comparisons. We exemplify this approach by describing in detail the historical formation of the signing communities whose languages constitute the Japanese Sign Family and by drawing in research on the formation of other signing communities. We then survey historical comparative research on the Japanese Sign Family and critically examine what the results of that research can tell us about the linguistic history of the languages in this family.