ABSTRACT
Danzaemon and the Edo outcaste order comprised a central element of the status system that emerged in eastern Japan during the early modern period, while at the same time consistently functioning as a scapegoat within the social order. When unpacking this history, however, processes of status group and social outcaste formation must be located within a larger history of caste. Economic transformations, on occasion brought about by the political dictates of shogunate administrators, at times through new developments in labour specialization, and also sporadically through natural disasters such as famines, triggered moments of acute destabilization of the early modern social order, whether in the form of tensions in regional social orders or problems in the city of Edo itself. Edo-based outcaste groups probably experienced the transformative nature of capital more fully than such groups in any other location in Japan, assisting the elite strata as well as lower-class residents in Shinchō to more successfully integrate into the wider urban classes. From a more global perspective, the promulgation of a so-called Emancipation Edict can also be considered of great significance, actually linked to fundamental shifts in thinking about the relationships that existed between purity and pollution and labour and duty.
