ABSTRACT
In a large Tokyo auditorium in late 2005, Chin-sung Chun leaned forward toward the microphone from where she was sitting on a stage in front of some 200 audience members and cleared her throat. The speakers crackled to attention, at the ready to amplify the words of the UN Special Rapporteur on Discrimination Based on Work and Descent out across the room in front of her. For 30 minutes the special rapporteur spoke, detailing recent developments in how the UN was handling this newly established category of discrimination, Discrimination Based on Work and Descent, and giving her impressions of the previous three days, which she had spent touring neighborhoods of the Japanese Buraku minority group, meeting with leaders from their political movements, and sampling traditional Buraku food and cultural activities.
