The 'hamlet/village people' (部落民) are the Japanese people commonly believed to be descended from members of the pre-Meiji feudal class who were associated with 'defilement' (穢れ), such as executioners, undertakers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers, and tanners. The term encompasses both the historical and outcasts. During Japan's feudal era, these occupations acquired a hereditary status of oppression, and became an unofficial class of the Tokugawa class system during the Edo period. After the feudal system was abolished, the term came into use to refer to the former caste members and their descendants, who continue to experience stigmatization and discrimination. On the other hand, in practice, both eta and hinin were recognized as owners of fields, some with very large incomes (koku) and some economic power. Their chief held the title of Danzaemon (ja:弾左衛門) and had the authority to issue orders to eta and hinin throughout the country, as well as jurisdiction within the eta and hinin.

Terminology

The term is derived from buraku (部落), a Japanese term which refers literally to a small, generally rural, commune or hamlet. In the regions of Japan where the issue is much less publicly prominent, such as Hokkaido and Okinawa, is still used in a non-pejorative sense to refer to any hamlet. Historically, the term was used for an outcast community that was discriminated against officially and formally. A term used much for settlements is 'assimilation districts' (同和地区), an official term for districts designated for government and local authority assimilation projects from 1969 to 2002. The social issue concerning "discriminated communities" is usually referred to as 'assimilation issues' (同和問題) or, less commonly, 'hamlet issues' (部落問題). During the feudal era, the outcastes were termed lit. 'an abundance of defilement' or 'an abundance of filth' (穢多), a term now considered derogatory. towns were termed etamura (穢多村). Some refer to their own communities as 'villages' (村) and themselves as 'village people' (村の者). Other outcaste groups from whom may have been descended included the lit. 'non-human' (非人). 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.

Definition

Defining the as a separate group is difficult. parents sometimes do not tell their children about their ancestry in hopes of avoiding discrimination. Because of this, there is an increasingly large population that has no idea that others would consider them. Discrimination is primarily based on ancestry and location; someone with no ancestry may be viewed as one and discriminated against if they move to a former.

Historical origins

The predecessors to, called kawata (かわた) or eta (穢多) formed as a distinct group some time during the Heian period, AD 794–1185. The permeation of Buddhism into Japan in the first millennium led to the castigation of meat eating and similar activities. The Shinto and Buddhist cultures, which aimed for a certain purity of body and mind, considered working with dead animals, blood, or any sort of decaying object as polluting, and hence occupations like butchery and leather tanning were besmirched. The eta, people who held such occupations, dealt with pollution and were thus considered inferior or sub-human. However, because of their ability to deal with pollution, several myths emerged from the Heian through medieval periods about certain 's abilities to cleanse ritual pollution, and in some portrayals even possess magical powers. Another outcaste, the, were associated with the tanning industry, and had the exclusive rights to tan hides. Prior to the Edo period, these burakumin (peripatetic or settled) would live outside common population centers and maintained some socio-ethical significance, albeit negligible. They were also employed as mediators in disputes. Spatial and geographic markers played a significant role in the distinction between the burakumin and other members of society. , 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, prison officers, or executioners. 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 Danzaemon (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, Suruga, Mutsu and Mikawa Provinces.

Edo Period

In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa Shogunate, systemically extirpating the previous disarray in Japan wrought by rampant internecine strife and warring by daimyo, local feudal lords. He restored the power and influence of the hitherto vitiated shogun position, consolidated central authority, managed to exert control over strategically important daimyo and their fiefs and became the de facto leader of Japan. His rule brought out about the Edo period, which scholars characterize as the unification of Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate, citing neo-Confucian theory, ruled by dividing the people into four main categories. Older scholars believed that there were Shi-nō-kō-shō (士農工商) 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 are 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.

End of the feudal era

The feudal caste system in Japan ended formally in 1869 with the Meiji Restoration. In 1871, the newly formed Meiji government issued the 'Edict Abolishing Ignoble Classes' (賤民廃止令) decree, giving outcasts equal legal status. It is currently known better as the Emancipation Edict (解放令). However, were deprived of the exclusive rights of disposal of dead bodies of horses and cattle. The elimination of their monopolies of certain occupations actually resulted in a decrease of their general living standards, while social discrimination simply continued. During the early Meiji era, many anti- riots (Kaihōrei-hantai-ikki (解放令反対一揆)) 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 commoners. 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 abattoirs and as butchers, 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 'former ' (旧穢多), while the newly liberated outcasts called themselves 'new citizens' (新平民), among other terms. Nakae Chōmin was a late 19th century statesmen 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 'special hamlets' (特殊部落), 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 'assimilation' (同和) philosophy which encouraged improvements in living standards of communities and integration with the mainstream Japanese society, and the 'levelers' (水平社) philosophy which concentrated on confronting and criticising alleged perpetrators of discrimination.

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, Japanese family registration 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. A 1993 report by the Japanese government counted 4,533 assimilation districts (同和地区) 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. 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. 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.

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. In 1969, the government passed the Special Measures Law for Assimilation Projects (同和対策事業特別措置法) to provide funding to these communities. Communities deemed to be in need of funding were designated for various Assimilation Projects (同和対策事業), 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.

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. 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, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima, Tokyo, Toyama, Ishikawa, and Okinawa.

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. Mitsuhiro Suganuma, an ex-member of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, testified in 2006 that account for about 60 percent of yakuza.

rights movement

As early as 1922, officials of the organized a campaign, the "Levelers Association of Japan", 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. After World War II, the National Committee for Burakumin Liberation was initiated, changing its name to the Buraku Liberation League 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 Hokkaidō and Okinawa. "Human Rights Promotion Centers" (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.

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. 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. 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 National Liberation Alliance (全国部落解放運動連合会), or, affiliated to the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). It was formed in 1979 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. 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". 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. 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 "National Confederation of Human Rights Movements in The Community" (全国地域人権運動総連合) or.

Religious discrimination

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: "We shouldn't disgrace our ancestors and violate humanity by our harsh words and terrible actions. We, who know how cold the human world is, and how to take care of humanity, can seek and rejoice from the bottom of our hearts in the warmth and light of human life." 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.

Notable

Discrimination in Japan

General