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The are a social grouping of Japanese people descended from members of the feudal class associated with , mainly those with occupations related to death such as , Gravedigger, slaughterhouse workers, , and tanners. Burakumin are physically indistinguishable from other Japanese but have historically been regarded as a socially distinct group. When identified, they are often subject to discrimination and prejudice. , there were an estimated 3 million burakumin living in the country, mostly in western Japan.
During Japan's feudal era, these occupations acquired a hereditary status of oppression, and later became a formal class within the Edo society of the Edo period (1603–1868). The stratum immediately below merchants comprised the hinin (literally "non-persons"), and below them the eta ("great filth"), who were together known as the senmin ("base people"). They were subject to various legal restrictions, such as being forced to live in separate villages or neighborhoods. In 1871, the new Meiji government legally abolished the feudal classes, but stigma against the former hinin and eta continued. The term came into use to refer to these people and their descendants. Some reports indicate that discrimination against burakumin in marriage and employment persists in certain regions. They are more likely to work a low-paying job, live in poverty, or be associated with the yakuza. A movement for burakumin rights began in the 1920s, and the Buraku Liberation League was founded in 1946; it has achieved some of its legal goals, including securing restrictions on third-party access to koseki. Notable burakumin include writer Kenji Nakagami and politician Hiromu Nonaka.
| +Terms !Roman !Kanji !Meaning !Annotation | |||
| 被差別部落 | 'Discriminated community/hamlet' | is a commonly used, polite term, with people from them called or . | |
| 部落民 | 'Hamlet people' | refers either to hamlet people per se or is used as an abbreviation of people from a discriminated community/hamlet. Very old people tend to use the word in the former meaning. Its use is sometimes frowned upon, though it is by far the most commonly used term in English. | |
| 未解放部落 | 'Unliberated communities' | is a term sometimes used by human rights groups, and has a degree of political meaning to it. | |
| 特殊部落 | 'Special hamlets' | was a term used during the early 20th century but is now considered pejorative. |
The social issue concerning "discriminated communities" is usually referred to as or, less commonly, .
During the Tokugawa period, the outcastes were termed , a term now considered derogatory. towns were termed etamura.
Some refer to their own communities as and themselves as .
Other outcaste groups from whom may have been descended included the . The definition of , as well as their social status and typical occupations varied over time, but typically included ex-convicts and vagrants who worked as town guards, street cleaners or entertainers.
During the 19th century, the term was invented to name the and because both classes were forced to live in separate village neighborhoods.
, meaning 'non-human', was another pre- status, applying to certain criminals, beggars and camp followers of samurai. Their position was more mobile, and they were usually thought to be less polluted. The Tokugawa shogunate regarded beggars as and allowed them to beg in designated areas. They had to work as restroom attendants, , or .
Within the hinin and communities there would usually be a centralized chieftain who was given the exclusive license of tanning, candle wicks and other similar occupations, employing their peers and concentrating great wealth and local power. This chieftain took on the name of 弾左衛門]] and was given the authority to supervise the hisabetsumin living in the hamlets located in the eight provinces of the Kanto region, the Izu Province, as well as in parts of Kai Province, Suruga Province, Mutsu Province and Mikawa Province Provinces.
The Tokugawa shogunate, citing Neo-Confucianism, ruled by dividing the people into four main categories. Older scholars believed that there were of "samurai, peasants ( hyakushō), craftsmen, and merchants" ( chōnin) under the daimyo, with 80% of peasants under the 5% samurai class, followed by craftsmen and merchants. However, various studies have revealed since about 1995 that the classes of peasants, craftsmen, and merchants under the samurai were considered equal, and the old hierarchy chart has been removed from Japanese history textbooks. In other words, peasants, craftsmen, and merchants are not a social pecking order, but a social classification.
The burakumin held occupations associated with religious impurity, and were subsequently relegated as outcastes and subject to ostracization in the mainstream Japanese society. Among the members of the outcastes were the eta (hereditary outcastes), landless peasants and the hinin, which comprised people guilty of certain crimes and their offspring. As Japanese society stabilized, the demand for leather declined, as it was used largely for warring purposes, and along with the Tokugawa caste policy, the eta were relegated to the peripheries of villages or formed their own communities. The hinin were eventually forced to join in eta settlements ( buraku).
As the Edo period witnessed local prosperity, the shogunate augmented the differences between the four classes (even between the burakumin and the hinin), and often used the two outcaste groups as scapegoats. Various humiliating injunctions mandating certain dress codes or hairstyles for burakumin were passed, and by the 18th century, they were prohibited from entering temples, homes of common citizens and schools without permission. At this point, the burakumin were generally economically subsistent on the government's purchase of the war equipment they produced, and they adopted occupations in the military as jailers, torturers and executioners.
During the early Meiji era, many anti- riots () happened around the country. For example, in a village in Okayama when "former " tried to buy alcohol, four men were killed, four men were injured and 25 houses were destroyed by . In another village, as part of an anti-Government riot, 263 houses were destroyed and 18 former s were killed.
The practice of eating meat existed even during the Edo period, but the official ban of the consumption of meat from livestock was ended in 1871 in order to "Westernise" the country. Many former began to work in slaughterhouse and as , as they were thought to be experienced with the handling of dead bodies.
Slow-changing social attitudes, especially in the countryside, meant that abattoirs and their workers were often met with hostility from local residents. Continued ostracism, the decrease of living standards and the development of modern construction and city sprawl resulted in former communities becoming slum areas. Prejudice against the consumption of meat continued throughout the Meiji period. In 1872, a group of , who objected to the Emperor's consumption of meat, tried to enter the Tokyo Imperial Palace and four of them were killed. They claimed that gods would leave Japan because the Japanese had eaten meat.
There were many terms used to indicate former outcastes, their communities or settlements at the time. Official documents referred to them as , while the newly liberated outcasts called themselves , among other terms.
Nakae Chōmin was a late 19th century statesman who worked for the liberation of . He transferred his resident registration to and denounced the discrimination against them when he campaigned during the election of 1890 from Osaka and won.
The term , now considered inappropriate, started being used by officials during the 1900s, and resulted in the meaning of the word ('hamlet') coming to imply former villages in certain parts of Japan.
Attempts to resolve the problem during the early 20th century were of two types: the dōwa philosophy which encouraged improvements in living standards of communities and integration with the mainstream Japanese society, and the suiheisha philosophy which concentrated on confronting and criticising alleged perpetrators of discrimination.
A 1993 report by the Japanese government counted 4,533 throughout the country. Most were located in western Japan, while none were located in Hokkaido and Tōhoku. About three quarters of the districts are in rural areas. The size of each community ranged from less than five households to more than 1,000 households.
It is estimated that around 1,000 buraku communities chose not to register as , wanting to avoid the negative attention that could come from explicitly declaring themselves .
According to a survey performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government during 2003, 76% of Tokyo residents would not change their opinion of a close neighbor whom they discovered to be a ; 4.9% of respondents, on the other hand, would actively avoid a neighbor. There is still a social stigma for being a resident of certain areas associated traditionally with the , and some lingering discrimination in matters such as marriage and employment.
In 1969, the government passed the dōwa taisaku jigyō tokubetsu sochihō to provide funding to these communities. Communities deemed to be in need of funding were designated for various dōwa taisaku jigyō, such as construction of new housing and community facilities such as health centers, libraries and swimming pools. The projects were terminated in 2002 with a total funding of an estimated 12 trillion yen over 33 years.
Prejudice against most often manifests itself in the form of marriage discrimination and sometimes in employment. Traditionalist families have been known to check on the backgrounds of potential in-laws to identify people of ancestry. These checks are now illegal, and marriage discrimination is diminishing; Nadamoto Masahisa of the Buraku History Institute estimates that between 60 and 80% of marry a non-, whereas for people born during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the rate was 10%. Over the past decades, the number of marriages between and non- have increased, and opinion polls have shown a decrease in the number of Japanese willing to state they would discriminate against .
Many companies were known to have used lists of addresses that were developed first in 1975 to exclude the . The average income of a family was significantly less than the national average (60% in 1992).
Cases of continuing social discrimination are known to occur mainly in western Japan, particularly in the Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, and Hiroshima regions, where many people, especially the older generation, stereotype residents (whatever their ancestry) and associate them with squalor, unemployment and criminality.
No communities were identified in the following prefectures: Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate Prefecture, Miyagi, Akita Prefecture, Yamagata, Fukushima, Tokyo, Toyama, Ishikawa, and Okinawa.
Mitsuhiro Suganuma, an ex-member of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, testified in 2006 that account for about 60 percent of yakuza.Archived at Ghostarchive and the
After World War II, the National Committee for Burakumin Liberation was initiated, changing its name to the Buraku Kaihō Dōmei during the 1950s. The league, with the endorsement of the socialist and communist parties, influenced the government into making important concessions during the late 1960s and 1970s.
During the 1960s, the Sayama Incident publicised the problems of the group. The incident involved the murder conviction of a member of the discriminated communities based on circumstantial evidence, which is generally given little weight against physical evidence in Japanese courts.
One concession was the passing of the Special Measures Law for Assimilation Projects, which provided financial aid for the discriminated communities. In 1976, legislation was also approved banning third parties from investigating another person's family registry. This traditional system of registry, kept for all Japanese by the Ministry of Justice since the 19th century, would reveal an individual's ancestry if consulted. By the new legislation, these records could now be consulted only for legal cases, making it more difficult to identify or discriminate against members of the group.
During the 1980s, some educators and local governments, particularly in areas with relatively large 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. rights groups exist presently in all parts of Japan except for Hokkaido and Okinawa.
人権啓発センター have been established across the country by prefectural governments and local authorities; these, in addition to promoting rights, campaign on behalf of a wide range of other groups such as women, the disabled, ethnic minorities, foreign residents and released prisoners. Even into the early 1990s, however, discussion of the 'liberation' of these discriminated communities, or even their existence, was rare in public discussion.
Early sessions were marked by occasions of violence and kidnapping, and several BLL activists have been arrested for such acts. The legality of these sessions is still disputed, but to this date the authorities have mostly ignored them except in the more extreme cases.Upham, Frank K. (1987), Instrumental Violence and the Struggle for Buraku Liberation, 146–190, in Michael Weiner (ed.), Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan Volume II Indigenous and Colonial Others, London and New York: Routledge Curzon. .Pharr, Susan J. (1990), Burakumin Protest: The incident at Yoka High School_, 133–145, in Michael Weiner(ed.), Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan Volume II Indigenous and Colonial Others, London and New York: Routledge Curzon. .Ichinomiya Yoshinari and Group K21 and Terazono Atsushi (eds.) (2003), Dowa riken no shinso 2 (Jinken Mafia-ka suru "Buraku Kaiho Domei" no renkinjutsu o ou! — The true face of Dowa interests 2 (Chasing the alchemy of the "Buraku Liberation League" which Mafiaizes human rights) ("Invasion of human rights" incidents in liberation education and human rights education), Tokyo: Takarajimasha.
In 1990, Karel van Wolferen's criticism of the BLL in his much-acclaimed book The Enigma of Japanese Power prompted the BLL to demand the publisher halt publication of the Japanese translation of the book. Van Wolferen condemned this as an international scandal.
The other major activist group is the Zenkoku Buraku Kaihō Undō Rengōkai, or , affiliated to the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). It was formed in 1979Neary, Ian (1997), Burakumin In Contemporary Japan_, 50–78, in Michael Weiner (ed.), Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity, London: Routledge p. 66 . by BLL activists who were either purged from the organization or abandoned it during the late 1960s, due to, among other things, their opposition to the decision that subsidies to the should be limited to the BLL members only. Not all were BLL members, and not all residents of the areas targeted for subsidies were historically descended from the outcastes.Upham (1987).
The often disputed the BLL, accusing them of chauvinism. The conflict between the two organizations increased during 1974 when a clash between teachers belonging to a JCP-affiliated union and BLL activists at a high school in Yoka, rural Hyōgo Prefecture, put 29 in hospital.
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 informed the United Nations about the alleged human rights violations committed by the BLL in the course of their "denunciation sessions" held with accused "discriminators".Ichinomiya, Group K21 and Terazono (eds.) (2003).
According to a BLL-funded think tank, when cases of discrimination were alleged, the often conducted denunciation sessions as fierce as those of the BLL. Nonetheless, the IMADR was designated a UN human rights NGO in March 1993.Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute (2005 2004), Photo Document of the Post-war 60 Years-Development of the Buraku Liberation Movement, Osaka: Kaiho Publishing Company Ltd.
On March 3, 2004, the announced that "the issue has basically been resolved" and formally disbanded. On March 4, 2004, they began a new organization known as the Zenkoku Chiiki Jinken Undō Sōrengō' or ."Zenkoku Buraku Kaihou Undou Rengkai" (National Buraku Liberation Alliance) (2004), "Zenkairen Dai 34 Kai Teiki Taikai Ni Tuite" ('About the Zenkairen 34th Regular Meeting), available at http://www.geocities.jp/zenkairen21/01-5.html February.
Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism originally patronized the lower castes. In 1922, when the National Levelers' Association () was initiated in Kyoto, Mankichi Saiko, a founder of the society and Jodo Shinshu priest, said, critiquing aggressive postures on the denouncement of acts of discrimination:
After many petitions from the BLL, in 1969 the Honganji changed its opinion on the issue. , which disassociated from the BLL in 1968, regrets this decision.
Religious discrimination against the was not recognized until the BLL's criticism sessions became widespread. For example, in 1979 the Director-General of the Sōtō Sect of Buddhism made a speech at the "3rd World Conference on Religion and Peace" claiming that there was no discrimination against burakumin in Japan.
Post-war situation
Although liberated legally during 1871 with the abolition of the feudal caste system, this did not end social discrimination against nor improve their living standards; until recently, Koseki was fixed to an ancestral home address, which allowed people to deduce their ancestry.
Demographics
The number of asserted to be living in modern Japan varies from source to source. Japanese government statistics show the number of residents of assimilation districts who claim ancestry, whereas the Buraku Liberation League (BLL) figures are estimates of the total number of descendants of all former and current residents, including current residents without any ancestry.
(2025). 9780520959163, University of California Press. ISBN 9780520959163 BLL has extrapolated Meiji-era figures to arrive at an estimate of nearly three million . In some areas, are in a majority; per a 1997 report, they accounted for more than 70 percent of all residents of Yoshikawa (now Kōnan) in Kōchi Prefecture. In Ōtō, Fukuoka Prefecture, they accounted for more than 60 percent.
Discrimination in access to services
In many parts of the country, settlements built on the site of former villages ceased to exist by the 1960s because of either urban development or integration into mainstream society. However, in other regions, many of their residents continued to suffer from slum-like housing and infrastructure, lower economic status, illiteracy, and lower general educational standards.
Social discrimination
Cases of social discrimination against residents of areas are still an issue in certain regions. Outside of the Kansai region, people in general are often not aware of the issues experienced by those of ancestry, and if they are, this awareness may only be awareness of the history of feudal Japan. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic and the campaigns by the Buraku Liberation League to remove any references in the media that may propagate discrimination against them, the issue is rarely discussed in the media.
Yakuza membership
According to David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro in Yakuza: The Explosive Account of Japan's Criminal Underworld (1986), account for about 70% of the members of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest yakuza crime syndicate in Japan.
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rights movement
As early as 1922, officials of the organized a campaign, the Suiheisha, to advance their rights. The Declaration of the encouraged the to unite in resistance to discrimination, and sought to create a positive identity for the victims of discrimination, insisting that the time had come to be "proud of being ". The declaration portrayed the ancestors as "manly martyrs of industry" and argued that 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, the Yūma, designed to reduce the influence of the , the Levelers Association remained active until the late 1930s.
Liberation League and the
The Buraku Liberation League is considered one of the most militant among 's rights groups. The BLL is known for its fierce "denunciation and explanation sessions", where alleged perpetrators of discriminatory actions or speech are summoned for a public hearing before a panel of activists.
Religion
Historically, they were followers of their own folk religion, and even in modern times, a significant portion of the burakumin population practices their own folk religion and ancestor worship. Today, most burakumin share common religious practices with the majority of Japanese citizens, following a unique mixture of Shinto and Buddhism, known as Shinbutsu-shūgō (神仏習合). They perform Shinto rituals at the birth of newborns. Historically, their funeral rituals were based on their own folk rites, and they buried their dead, unlike Buddhists. Many of them have also adopted Buddhism to escape social discrimination, as it offered religious advantages.
Notable
See also
Discrimination in Japan
General
Bibliography
Main text originally from Library of Congress, Country Studies. 'Religious Discrimination' and 'Jodo shinshu Honganji' sections adapted from Shindharmanet and BLHRRI.Org.
External links
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