Burakumin at the end of history - history of social class in Japan

Social Research, Spring, 2003 by Ian Neary

We might finally consider the significance of open secret that a senior member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, mentioned as a possible prime minister, is of buraku origin. Yet this has seldom been mentioned in either his Japanese- or English-language profiles. Should we regard this as evidence that barriers to advancement for burakumin are growing weaker all the time? Or should we be more impressed by the fact that it remains difficult to discuss a person's background openly to the extent that I too feel unable to mention him by name?

Epilogue

Standard histories of Japan, including the exhaustive six-volume Cambridge History of Japan, have largely ignored the buraku issue. The last three volumes of the History, which cover the period from 1550 to the mid-twentieth century, contain just four references to burakumin and their predecessors (Hall et al., 1988, 1989, 1991). More recent work, such as the history produced by Totman (2000) that was quoted extensively earlier, provides better coverage. Moreover, there is now a substantial body of academic work in English. Nagahara (1979), Ooms (1996), and Groemer (2001) have written about the premodern history of the problem. In addition to the pioneering work of DeVos and Wagatsuma (1972) that first published in the 1960s, there is work by Upham (1987, 1993), Neary (1989, 1997), and more recently McLauchlan (2000) and Su-Lan Reber (1999) on developments within buraku communities in the twentieth century and the impact of government policy. There are even more specialized works that consider the images of discrimination in Japanese literature, such as those published by Dodd (1996), Andersson (2001), and Fowler (2000).

Nevertheless, there is little appreciation outside Japan of the huge amount of work in Japanese. Ooms notes that historians have produced a "monumental body of research about the Tokugawa history of today's burakumin" (1996: 6). As we have seen, a substantial amount of research about the earlier period has also been undertaken; scholars from all branches of the social sciences have worked on facets of the buraku problem. Naturally, there is no unanimity among these scholars and this article has tried to indicate some aspects of the major disagreements.

But are burakumin a pariah group? Although they have been marginalized by those in power and were regarded as less than human, it would be wrong to see them as an ethnic group and there is little of their language or culture that they do not also share with the rest of the population of Japan. To use a slightly different term, they cannot even be regarded as an "encompassed community" with a shared collective identity or lifestyle. There is evidence that they faced, and maybe still face, structural disadvantages in the employment and marriage--disadvantages equivalent perhaps to those encountered by the disabled or Koreans resident in Japan. But do they therefore need or deserve special rights or other formal assistance to enable them to exercise equal citizenship? As we have seen, considerable debate continues about this. From the evidence reviewed in this article, we can suggest two tentative conclusions. First, if there had been a time in the twentieth century or earlier that burakumin might have been regarded as a "pariah minority," they no longer are. Second, although substantial disagreement exists among Japanese researchers about the background to the issues, there is also some common ground. Even if they disagree about, whether burakumin are at the end of their history, there is agreement that they should be.