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

Social Research, Spring, 2003 by Ian Neary

* in a narrow sense they were those excluded for some reason from the social order: beggars, prisoners, performers, lepers, eta;

* they were quite different from the pariahs of the earlier period who were a form of slave; they were alienated from the basic relations of production, excluded from ruling property relations, and did work that did not directly produce wealth--for example, washing, animal slaughter, day laboring;

* they served no master and were outside the class/status system;

* they were despised and socially excluded like the eta, some of whom worked as slaughterers, and they were regarded as unclean and placed on the boundaries of the eta class;

* they were part of a castelike structure in which the imperial court family was regarded as "superhuman" and they were regarded as "subhuman."

Kuroda suggested that changes in land-holding arrangements, which lay behind the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, not only transformed the ruling class but also fundamentally changed the nature of the status system. Some pariah groups disappeared; others were systematically included within the new system, still with pariah status but considered as part of the system rather than excluded from it (Okiura, 2000: 148-53).

These two articles generated considerable discussion among historians and several hundred papers exploring or refuting aspects contained in the two pieces were published in the 70s and 80s. Only a few of the points made will be discussed, since space constraints preclude a survey of all the responses.

Niunoya Tetsuichi (1979) suggested that at the start of the period the basic rational for this social exclusion was related to Shinto notions of pollution, caused by association with death, birth, or blood, or with crime or disease, especially transmittable diseases such as leprosy. However, as time went on it was increasingly related to a Buddhist concept of "sin," committed either in this lifetime or a previous one. Whereas the Shinto pollution could be cleansed, the Buddhist sin could not be as easily removed and could be inherited.

From the late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, new land was developed and new agricultural techniques introduced, precipitating changes in the economic, political, and social structure. As more peasants farmed their own land, they sought to increase productivity by using draft animals (Okiura, 2000: 204). Meanwhile, although Buddhist ideas about respect for all sentient beings had spread, it was the case that cows and horses were kept not as sources of meat or leather but rather to farm land, provide milk, and bear more animals. The longer they lived the better, a view quite consistent with the Buddhist ideas that were developing.

There was still a need for someone to deal with the animals' bodies when they died and even to turn their hides into leather. Those who performed these functions were often subject to restrictions on contact with mainstream others, although usually only for limited periods of time that were measured in weeks or months, depending on the seriousness of the pollution encountered. Of course, those who worked with leather full time or ate a meat-rich diet were permanently excluded from mainstream society (although we need to bear in mind the great regional variation). In the north of the main island, peasant farmers would supplement their diets with the meat from the animals and birds that they hunted, unconcerned by Buddhist prohibitions. Okiura even proposes that the origins of some communities may be found in the hunter-gatherer groups that settled rather late and that continued to be linked to "dirty work." He suggests there might be a direct link between some of these groups and Jomon culture--that of the prehistoric period before the start of the Christian era (Okiura, 2000: 194, 206).