Buraku or Burakumin

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The buraku people, or burakumin (literally, “village people”), are a group of approximately three million ethnic Japanese that is discriminated against by the majority Japanese population. This discrimination manifests itself in higher illness rates and higher unemployment than for mainstream Japanese, lower wages for the same jobs, the existence of illegal blacklists that corporations buy and use to avoid hiring buraku people, the discouragement of marriage between burakumin and non- burakumin Japanese, and the historic complicity of Japanese religious bodies in segregating temples and bestowing prejudicial death names (kaimyo ). From the 1990s to 2006, the Internet has been used to post defamatory statements against the buraku.

The discrimination ostensibly is based on historic, familial occupations that were deemed “unclean” by Japanese religions (Buddhism and Shinto), such as butchery, tanning, and leatherwork; however, in modern Japan, although descent is an operative factor, the primary determinant of buraku identity is location, as many buraku people live in designated government-supported housing and support areas (dōwa chiku ). Today, an emergent issue is the question of what constitutes buraku identity: some residents of dōwa chiku claim ancestral buraku lineages, and others are socially defined as buraku people simply because they live in areas designated for burakumin.

There is scholarly debate as to the historical origin of buraku discrimination. During the Heian period (794–1185) the lowest in society (senmin, as opposed to the ryomin, the “good”) often handled leather armor for warlords (daimyo ), and in return they usually were provided with some tax relief and poor land. They were also given “unclean” jobs such as jailer and executioner, and were expected to be the first line of defense in case of attack. Some scholars conjecture that this social segmentation was the beginning of what came to be the buraku designation; however, it was distinctly in the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) when the discriminatory policies and structure were established in a stratified social order (samurai, farmer, artisan, and merchant) that excluded the eta and the hinin. (These discriminatory terms, which respectively mean “much filth” and “nonhuman,” were used as social designations at the time.) The ostracized eta and hinin groups are considered the precursors of today’s burakumin. In 1871 discrimination against this subgroup was abolished by the Emancipation Edict (Eta Kaihō Rei ), but the edict had little effect on bettering conditions.

In March 1922 the National Levelers Association (Zenkoku Suiheisha ) was founded to address the persistent discrimination against the buraku people. With the rise of the Japanese military establishment, the organization was outlawed in 1937, then reinstituted itself in 1946 as the National Committee for Buraku Liberation (then the Buraku Liberation League in 1955). In 1969, through sustained political activism by the buraku organizations and their supporters, the Japanese government enacted special legislation (Laws on Special Measures for Dowa Region) that dramatically bettered conditions for the buraku people. It remains to be seen how the expiration of this legislation in 2003 will continue to affect the buraku community and the notable advances they have made in such areas as education, housing, and employment. While living conditions have improved and exogamous marriage increases, the major issue for the buraku liberation effort—as with many human rights efforts across the globe—is how to sustain the energy and communal effort to improve the majority Japanese attitude toward the buraku people into the next generation.

SEE ALSO Caste; Discrimination; Minorities; Racism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute. http://blhrri.org/index_e.htm.

Kitaguchi, Suehiro. 1999. An Introduction to the Buraku Issue: Questions and Answers. Trans. and intro. Alastair McLauchlan. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press.

McLauchlan, Alastair. 2003. Prejudice and Discrimination in Japan—The Buraku Issue. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen.

Meerman, Jacob. 2003. The Mobility of Japan’s Burakumin Militant Advocacy and Government Response. In Boundaries of Clan and Color: Transnational Comparisons of Inter-group Disparity, ed. William Darity Jr. and Ashwini Deshpande, 130–151. London: Routledge.

Neary, Ian. 2003. Burakumin at the End of History. Social Research 70 (1): 269ff.

Leslie D. Alldritt