ABSTRACT
Japan’s Burakumin are a SRELIM of 2 or 3 million out of a total population of 130 million. To the present they remain near the bottom of Japan’s class structure, although they are identical genetically and culturally (same language, religion, and customs) to other Japanese. Centuries ago, they originated as eta, those engaged in “polluting” occupations (animal slaughter, leatherwork, disposal of the dead) and hinin, social deviants such as vagrants, unemployables, but also impoverished peasants who had threatened the authorities (Donoghue 1978: 27-28; Hirasawa 1989: 31). By and large only the memory of these groups remains, but the Burakumin still live in areas that only yesterday were segregated and decrepit ghettos, and still work in lowskill blue-collar occupations. Long-standing discrimination by Japan’s majority explains their continuing existence as a low-status, low-income group. In the last four decades, partly because of the militant advocacy of the Buraku Liberation League, an organization of and for the Burakumin, Japan’s governments invested the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars in ghetto rehabilitation and Burakumin education. This “big push” dramatically reduced the gap in socio-economic status between mainline Japanese and the Buraku minority, although the latter are still far from parity with the majority. (In this chapter, “Buraku” means “of the Burakumin,” and the uncapitalized “buraku” means those village(s) that had once been the exclusive residence of the Burakumin. “Burakumin” is a euphemism that literally means village (buraku) people (min).)2
Buraku mobility history is instructive for three reasons: the unusual manner in which the Buraku Liberation League (BLL) has provoked government to promote “Buraku liberation”; the extraordinary manner in which government has responded; and the question of the degree to which the Burkau minority
is integrating into the larger society. The account that follows concentrates on these three themes.
