ABSTRACT
The discrimination against the inhabitants of buraku is a regrettable sociohistoric aspect of premodern and modern Japan (Edo and Meiji periods). This discrimination evolved out of the feudal class system of the Edo period (AD 1603-1867), which divided people into four classes (samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants) and two groups of outcastes. The present day burakumin are descended from those outcastes and were derogatorily referred to as eta (defiled people) and hinin (non-human). After the collapse of the Edo shogunate in 1867, the Meiji government attempted to reintegrated the eta and hinin into mainstream Japanese society by classifying them as “new commoners”; however, the deeply rooted discrimination persisted and has continued to the present day.
