Burakumin (部落民: buraku, community + min, people), or hisabetsu buraku (被差別部落 "discriminated communities") are a Japanese social minority group. The burakumin are one of the main minority groups in Japan, along with the Ainu of Hokkaido and residents of Korean and Chinese descent. Their place in Japanese society is often compared to the Dalits, or Untouchables, in the culture of India. Past and current discrimination has resulted in lower educational attainment and socioeconomic status among hisabetsu buraku than among the majority of Japanese. Movements with objectives ranging from "liberation" to encouraging integration have tried over the years to change this situation.
The term 部落 buraku literally refers to a small, generally rural, commune. Even today, old people living in villages of northern and central regions of Japan may refer to these villages as buraku, indicating that the word's usage was not originally pejorative. Today, however, the term is primarily used as a shorthand for the hisabetsu buraku people; the use of the word in any medium is often frowned on or even prohibited, owing to pressure from rights groups. Historically the burakumin have also been refered to as eta (穢多, literally, "full of filth"); the term today is considered derogatory but still receives some use. They are sometimes, although less commonly, called mikaihō buraku (未開放部落 "unliberated communities", or "unfreed buraku"). Some burakumin refer to their own communities as "mura" (村 "villages") and themselves as "mura-no-mon" (村の者 "village people").
The number of burakumin asserted to be living in modern Japan varies from source to source. According to a 1993 investigation report by the Japanese Government, there are 4,442 douwa chiku (同和地区 "douwa area", recognized buraku communities), 298,385 buraku households, and 892,751 burakumin living in Japan. The Buraku Liberation League disputes this figure, and extrapolates Meiji-era figures to arrive at an estimate of nearly three million burakumin. [1] A 1999 source indicates the presence of some 2 million burakumin, living in approximately 5,000 settlements. [2] In some areas, burakumin hold a majority; they account for over 70 percent of all residents of Yoshikawa in Kochi Prefecture. In Ōtō in Fukuoka Prefecture, they account for over 60 percent.
Today's burakumin are descendants of pre-modern outcaste hereditary occupational groups, such as butchers, leather workers, and certain entertainers. During the Tokugawa period, such people were required to live in special communes and, like the rest of the population, were bound by sumptuary laws based on the inheritance of their social class. Discrimination against these occupational groups arose historically because of Buddhist prohibitions against killing and Shinto notions of kegare (穢れ "taint"), as well as government attempts at social control. According to Japan, a Modern History, 2002: (cited here [3]),
Fundamental Shinto beliefs equated goodness and godliness with purity and cleanliness, and they further held that impurities could cling to things and persons, making them evil or sinful.... But a person could become seriously contaminated by habitually killing animals or committing some hideous misdeed that ripped at the fabric of the community, such as engaging in incest or bestiality. Such persons, custom decreed, had to be cast out from the rest of society, condemned to wander from place to place, surviving as best they could by begging or by earning a few coins as itinerant singers, dancers, mimes, and acrobats.
Burakumin occupied the lowest level of the social hierarchy of feudal Japan; they were housed in separate segregated settlements, and were generally avoided by the rest of Japanese society. Burakumin typically had their own temples, and were not allowed to visit non-burakumin religious sites. In Japanese Buddhist sects it is usual for a dead person to be given a posthumous religious name (戒名 kaimyo) but the burakumin would often be given discriminatory names that included the kanji characters for beast, humble, ignoble, servant, and other derogatory expressions.[4] When dealing with members of other castes, they were expected to display signs of subservience, such as the removal of headwear. In an 1859 court case described by author Shimazaki Toson, a magistrate declared that "An eta is worth 1/7 of an ordinary person."
Historically, burakumin were not liable for taxation in feudal times, including the Tokugawa period, because the taxation system was based on rice yields, which they were not permitted to possess. Some burakumin were also called kawaramono (河原者, "dried-up riverbed people") because they lived along river banks that could not be turned into rice fields. Since their undesirable status afforded them an effective monopoly in their trades, some succeeded economically and even occasionally obtained samurai status through marrying or the outright purchase of troubled houses. Some historians point out that such exclusive rights originated in ancient times, granted by shrines, temples, kuge, or the imperial court, which held authority before the Shogunate system was established.
In 1871, in an attempt to modernize Japan, the Meiji government abolished most derogatory names applying to the burakumin; despite this, the new laws had limited effect on the social discrimination faced by the former outcastes and their descendants. The laws did, however, eliminate the economic monopolies burakumin had over certain occupations. Prejudice against eta lingers into the modern era, and according to human rights workers is still a factor today.
Because they have not spread widely in Japan, the discrimination against burakumin varies greatly according to the region. Discrimination is said to be most severe in western Japan; it has been alleged that traditionalist families in western regions of Japan still check the backgrounds of potential in-laws to prevent intermarriage with descendants of eta, and Chinese or Korean families.
The fact of religious discrimination against the burakumin was commonly denied until the late twentieth century. For example, in 1979 the Director-General of the Soto Sect of Buddhism made a speech at the '3rd World Conference on Religion and Peace' claiming that there was no longer any discrimination against burakumin in Japan.[5] However in 1981 the 'Solidarity Conference of Religious Groups for the Solution of the Dowa Problem' was founded with the participation of fifty-nine religious sects and the BLL.[6]
According to David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro in "Yakuza: The Explosive Account of Japan's Criminal Underworld (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1986)", burakumin account for about 70 percent of the members of Yamaguchi-gumi, the biggest yakuza syndicate in Japan. This perception of a disproportionate involvement with organized crime in Japan is sometimes used as a justification for continued discrimination against burakumin.
As early as 1922, leaders of the hisabetsu buraku organized a movement, the "Levelers Association of Japan" (Suiheisha), to advance their rights. The Declaration of the Suiheisha encouraged the Burakumin to unite in resistance to discrimination. At the same time, it sought to frame a positive identity for the victims of discrimination, insisting that the time had come to be "proud of being eta." The declaration portrayed the Burakumin ancestors as "manly martyrs of industry." To submit meekly to oppression would be to insult and profane these ancestors. Despite internal divisions among anarchist, Bolshevik, and social democratic factions, and despite the Japanese government's establishment of an alternate organization Yūma movement, designed to undercut the influence of the Suheisha, the Levelers Association remained active until the late 1930s.
After World War II, the National Committee for Burakumin Liberation was founded, changing its name to the Buraku Liberation League (Buraku Kaihou Doumei) in the 1950s. The league, with the support of the socialist and communist parties, pressured the government into making important concessions in the late 1960s and 1970s. One concession was the passing of the Special Measures Law for Assimilation Projects, which provided financial aid for the discriminated communities. Another was the closing of nineteenth-century family registers, kept by the Ministry of Justice for all Japanese, which revealed the outcaste origins of families and individuals. These records could now be consulted only in legal cases, making it more difficult to identify or discriminate against members of the group.
Even into the early 1990s, however, discussion of the 'liberation' of these discriminated communities, or even their existence, was taboo in public discussion. In the 1960s, the Sayama incident (狭山事件), which involved a murder conviction of a member of the discriminated communities based on circumstantial evidence, focused public attention on the problems of the group. In the 1980s, some educators and local governments, particularly in areas with relatively large hisabetsu buraku populations, began special education programs, which they hoped would encourage greater educational and economic success for young members of the group and decrease the discrimination they faced.
Branches of burakumin rights groups exist today in all parts of Japan except for Hokkaido and Okinawa.
See also: Danzaemon (弾左衛門), a leader of buraku people in Tokyo, Buraku liberation movement (部落解放運動)
Among burakumin's rights groups, the Buraku Liberation League is considered one of the most militant. Several BLL activists have been arrested for violence. In 1990, Karel van Wolfren criticized the BLL in a book named "The Enigma of Japanese Power", prompting the BLL to demand the publisher halt publication of the book; van Wolfren condemned this incident as "an international scandal".
In 1988, the BLL formed the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR). The BLL sought for the IMADR to be recognized as a United Nations Non-Government Organization, but in 1991, the All Japan Federation of Buraku Liberation Movements (Zenkoku Buraku Kaihou Undou Rengoukai, or Zenkairen) informed the United Nations about the crimes the BLL had committed.
While nearly all Japanese Buddhist sects have discriminated against the burakumin, the case of the Jodo Shinshu Honganji Sect is a particularly bitter and ironic one. The original ideology of the sect, as propounded by its founder Shinran, was anti-discriminatory, rejecting the need to keep the traditional Buddhist precepts or to carry out the purification rituals of indigenous Japanese religion. As such butchers, fishermen, and so on, who had all been discriminated against by the older sects, were welcomed into the Jodo Shinshu.
The side-effect of this liberating ideology, however, was that it led to a series of anti-feudal rebellions, known as the Ikko-ikki revolts, which seriously threatened the religious and political status-quo. As such the political powers engineered a stituation whereby the Jodo Shinshu split into two competing branches, the Shinshu Otani-ha and the Honganji-ha. This had the consequence that the sects moved increasingly away from their anti-feudal position towards a feudal one.
Later the state also forced all people to belong to a specific Buddhist temple according to the formula:
"the imperial family is in Tendai, the peerage is in Shingon, the nobility is in Jodo (Honen's followers), the Samurai is in Zen, the beggar is in Nichiren, and Shin Buddhists (Shinran's followers) are at the bottom." (Kasahara 1996)
In consequence the Honganji, which under Rennyo's leadership had defiantly accepted the derogatory label of 'the dirty sect' (see Rennyo's letters known as the Ofumi / Gobunsho) now began to discriminate against its own burakumin members as it jostled for political and social status.
In 1922 the National Levelers' Association (Zenkoku-suiheisha) was founded in Kyoto, Japan by the Buraku-min to fight discrimination, and Mankichi Saiko, a founder of the movement and Jodo Shinshu priest, said:
"We shouldn't disgrace our ancestors and violate humanity by our harsh words and terrible actions. We, who know how cold the human world is, and how to take care of humanity, can seek and rejoice from the bottom of our hearts in the warmth and light of human life."[7]
Finally in 1969 the Honganji began to recognise its mistreatment of the Burakumin and appears to be beginning to address the problem.[8]
In High and Low (Japanese title 天国と地獄 Tengoku to jigoku, literally "Heaven and Hell") [9], a movie adapted in 1963 from Evan Hunter's King's Ransom, Akira Kurosawa made a political statement by having the main character work as a shoe industry executive who rose from humble origins as a simple leather worker, clearly implying (to Japanese audiences) the main character's burakumin status. The story has the main character selflessly sacrifice his fortune in order to save his driver's son, showing that burakumin are as heroic as anyone else.
The plight of the burakumin has also been presented in Hashi no nai kawa [10] (橋のない川 "The River With No Bridge") a novel by Sue Sumii (住井 すゑ), which recieved several film adaptations, in 1969, 1970 and 1992. The title refers to the fact that areas in which burakumin lived were often separated by a river, but bridges to cross were rarely constructed.
Author Lian Hearn depicts a fictional feudal country highly similar to that of Japan's own history in the three-book series Tales of the Otori (2003-2004). The series depicts a caste system wherein "untouchables" live outside of mainstream society. The protagonist develops a friendship with one such outcast, a tanner who lives and works with other tanners in riverside settlements.
Burakumin: Definition of Burakumin - See also links section at page bottom
The Burakumin: The Complicity of Japanese Buddhism in Oppression and an Opportunity for Liberation
Cooperativeness and Buraku Discrimination, discussion paper by Takuya Ito in the electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, 31 October 2005.
Solving Anti-Burakujūmin Prejudice in the 21st Century: Suggestions from 21 Buraku Residents, discussion paper by Alastair McLauchlan in the electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, 31 January 2003.
Shimazaki Toson, The Broken Commandment
Toshinori Kasahara, Shin Buddhism and the Buraku-min (1996 Honolulu Higashi Honganji)
Alldritt, Leslie D, The Burakumin: The Complicity of Japanese Buddhism in Oppression and an Opportunity for Liberation
Neary, Ian, "Burakumin in contemporary Japan," in Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of Homeogeneity, Michael Weiner, ed.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin"
Sections on Religious Discrimination and Jodo shinshu Honganji adapted from Shindharmanet and BLHRRI.Org.
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