The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 16 | Issue 5 | Number 4 | Article ID 5120 | Mar 01, 2018

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Affirmative Action Policies Under the Postwar JapaneseConstitution: On the Effects of the Dōwa Special MeasuresPolicy

Noah McCormack

Abstract

This article examines the background toJapan’s Dowa-related affirmative actionprograms wh ich , based on pos twarconstitutional guarantees, set about relievingthe material and psychological expressions ofmajority discrimination against Burakuresidents. It shows the generally beneficialconsequences of these programs, andhighl ights the overal l weakening ofdiscrimination, the improvement of livingconditions, and a high level of mixed living andintermarriage. Finally, it considers how theresulting erosion of Buraku-based identitiesremains contested both by those displaying acontinued will to discriminate, and by activistswho desire to maintain a Buraku-based identityinto the future.

Keywords

Japan; Dōwa policy; Buraku issue; identitypolitics; constitution; welfare

Responding to a new human rights-orientedconstitution, and related to deepeninginterconnections with US security andeconomic policy during Japan’s era of rapideconomic growth, the postwar Japanese state,in tandem with prefectural and municipalauthorities, conducted a massive—albeit little-known outside Japan—affirmative actionprogram. This targeted Dōwa or Assimilationareas, which are usually considered to besynonymous with Buraku areas, and more

particularly, the Dōwa kankeisha, orAssimilation-Related Persons, usuallyconsidered synonymous with Burakumin, wholived in those areas.1

The program included measures to ameliorateBuraku housing stock, road and sewageinfrastructure, and health and educationfacilities, all of which were frequently sub-standard in the 1950s and 1960s. They alsoincluded measures to promote the socialinclusion of Burakumin through education-related initiatives such as improved teacher-student ratios and the dispatch of support staff,as well as through work-related initiatives suchas preferential hiring by local municipalitiesand large corporations. These affirmativeaction measures aimed to alleviate the materialand psychological expressions of majoritydiscrimination against Burakumin and Burakuareas. Such remedial action was to contributeto the assimilation of this minority, which couldonly be identified by discrimination and itseffects, and not through language or ethnicmarkers, into an increasingly homogeneousnation.

These objectives have partly been achieved.The material disparities between so-calledBuraku areas and regular areas, andBurakumin and non-Burakumin, have beensignificantly reduced. Education and work-related outcomes are converging or haveconverged. Intermarriage rates for Burakuminare high. In fact, the very distinction betweenBuraku minority and non-Buraku majority hasbecome increasingly hard to grasp, due not

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only to intermarriage, but also to outflows ofpeople from Buraku areas into other areas, andinflows of non-Buraku people into Burakuareas. Data about mixed marriage, mixedliving, improved education and work outcomesindicates that assimilation on a material andsocial level has been rather successful.

However, even as it becomes increasinglydifficult to state with any precision who is aBurakumin, and whether an area is a Buraku,studies also indicate the existence of prejudiceand discriminatory attitudes towards Burakuareas and people. These two phenomena, Isuggest, may in fact be causally linked. As“real” Burakumin fade from view, literallyfantastic images and stereotypes from the pastare being re-cycled and circulate detachedfrom everyday reality, especially in cyberspace.I end with a consideration of the possibleeffects on this situation of the recently passedLaw f o r t he E l im ina t i on o f BurakuDiscrimination.

The Postwar Dōwa policy

Growing out of localized and individual anti-discrimination struggles of the late-nineteenthcentury, a national Buraku liberationorganization called the Levelers (Suiheisha)was established in the 1920s, mainly to attackdiscrimination against Buraku residents.Responding to anti-discrimination activism,some state assistance for infrastructuralimprovements was forthcoming, reaching aprewar peak of 0.1% of the state budget in1933 for a group at the time totaling perhaps1% of the population. This prewar program todeal with the Buraku problem is known as theReconciliation Movement (Yūwa Undō).

In the postwar era, activists shifted emphasisfrom mobilizing in cases of discriminationtowards permanent mobilization for aneconomic and cultural struggle to stabilize andimprove everyday living conditions.2 These

campaigns culminated in more comprehensivestate-backed relief measures, transformingmost Buraku areas. This postwar state programis known as the Dōwa or Assimilation Policy,and was centered on the Dōwa Projects SpecialMeasures Law of 1969, and its successor, theRegional Improvement Projects SpecialMeasures Law of 1982. A plethora ofprefectural and municipal initiatives, some ofwhich preceded and/or outlasted the statepolicy, unfolded alongside the centralgovernment Dōwa measures.

Central Government Dōwa Policy: A BriefTimeline

1951 National Dōwa Measures Joint Council established.1953 First Health Ministry Dōwa Budget allocations.

1960 Dōwa Measures Deliberative Committee established in theCabinet (LDP and JSP joint agreement).

1965Dōwa Measures Deliberative Committee Report, “BasicMeasures to Resolve the Social and Economic ProblemsConcerning Dōwa Areas” made public.

1969 10 Year Dōwa Projects Special Measures Law enacted.

1978 Dōwa Projects Special Measures Law extended for threeyears.

1982 5 Year Regional Improvement Special Measures Lawenacted.

1992 Regional Improvement Special Measures Law extended for 5years.

1997 Regional Improvement Special Measures Law revised andextended for 5 years.

2002 Regional Improvement Special Measures Law expires withno subsequent specific state measures.

2016 Law for the Elimination of Buraku Discrimination passed.

Key factors shaping Japan’s postwar era, interms of the Buraku or Dōwa issue, includedthe new human rights-focused constitution,modernization in the form of industrializationand urbanization, and rapid economic growth.Industrialization drove massive urbanmigration, depleting rural communities,upending occupational hierarchies, promotingincreasing participation in higher education,and massively expanding the area andpopulation of urban and suburban areas.Modernization and growth provided anincreasingly large budgetary pie to the state tospend on infrastructural improvements, as well

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as initiatives to improve educational andoccupational outcomes.

The Constitutional Basis for Affirmative Action

The constitution, with its interdiction ofdiscrimination, provided Buraku activists with astrong legal basis on which to call forgovernment action. Article 11 of the postwarconstitution provided that ‘The people shall notbe prevented from enjoying any of thefundamental human rights. These fundamentalhuman rights guaranteed to the people by thisconstitution shall be conferred upon the peopleof this and future generations as eternal andinviolate rights.’ Succeeding articles expandedon this principle. Thus, Article 13 guaranteedthat ‘All of the people shall be respected asindividuals’, and Article 14 that ‘All of thepeople are equal under the law and there shallbe no discrimination in political, economic orsocial relations because of race, creed, sex,social status or family origin.’

This final reference to family origin is thoughtto have been inserted into the text as a result ofrepresentations made by Buraku activists.Specifically, Matsumoto Jiichirō and TanakaShōgetsu, who both served multiple terms asSocialist Party Diet representatives, togetherwith Asada Zennosuke, approached RobertKades and Courtney Whitney in the Occupationadministration directly.3 Having an article inthe constitution refer directly to discriminationbased on social status and family origin wasthought vital for resolving the Buraku problem,which was understood to involve discriminationagainst people and areas seen to have low-status antecedents, and the material effects ofsuch discrimination.

Another const i tut ional provis ion ofconsiderable significance for the Burakuproblem was Article 24, which stated that‘Marriage shall be based only on the mutualconsent of both sexes […].’ This measure was

important because intended marriages betweenBuraku residents and non-Buraku residentsoften foundered on the opposition of family andrelatives. External intervention in prospectivemarital relationships, the constitutionindicated, was illegitimate.

Article 25 was also highly significant in termsof the Buraku problem and postwar affirmativeaction programs. It stated that ‘All people shallhave the right to maintain the minimumstandards of wholesome and cultured living’.Although the wartime destruction of housingstock had been a prob lem for urbanpopulations all around Japan, reconstruction inmany Buraku areas had been undertakenhaphazardly and often outside the frameworkof official urban redevelopment plans.4 Burakuareas, even in the 1960s, were frequentlymarked by inferior housing stock, withinadequate or lacking sewage and waterfacilities, electricity, and road access. Burakuactivists claimed that such living conditionswere the result of discrimination, which wasillegitimate according to Article 14, and thatsuch intolerable conditions needed urgent stateaction.5 Other issues included the fact thatresidents received vastly less schooling thanthe national average, well into the 1960s andbeyond. This was clearly in violation of Article26, which promised ‘All people shall have ther ight to rece ive an equal educat ioncorrespondent to their ability, as provided bylaw’. The right to freely choose an occupation,guaranteed by Article 22, and the right to work,guaranteed by Article 27, were also violated inthe postwar era by companies that screened jobapplicants and rejected those of Burakubackgrounds.6

In 1965, a well-known government reportcommissioned by Prime Minister Ikeda Hayatowas presented by the Dōwa MeasuresDeliberative Committee to his successor, SatōEisaku. The committee was headed by KimuraChūjirō, who was a senior official in the HealthMinistry with a background in welfare policy

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and poverty. Its report basically followed thisline of argument made by Buraku activists. Itoutlined how discrimination against peopleassociated with Buraku areas had limited theiropportunities to receive an education, tointeract with other members of society, towork, and so on. The physical effects of thissituation were visible in substandard Burakuliving conditions. The social effects ofd i scr iminat ion were mani fes ted bycomparatively lower educational andoccupational outcomes, political participationlevels, minimal social relationships with non-Buraku people, and income levels well belowthe national average. Buraku residents weredescribed as affected by psychological isolationand cultural backwardness as a result, whilethis combination of exclusion and consequentinsularity had allowed and encouraged theperpetuation of strong negative prejudicesagainst Buraku and Burakumin. The role of thegovernment was presented as being to improveliving conditions, and to strengthen educationalsupport and other welfare services, so as toeradicate the physical and psychologicalmarkers of deprivation and exclusion. Overtime, the elimination of material disadvantage,in combination with efforts to combatpsychological discrimination and foster Burakusubjectivity, should lead to the resolution of theproblem.

The human r ights guaranteed by theConstitution were prominently cited in thisreport, and in the resulting law. The 1965report stated that ‘Buraku discrimination inmodern society, in a word, is the violation ofthe civil rights and freedoms. Freedom refersto freedom of occupation, the right to haveguaranteed equality of opportunity ineducation, freedom of residence, movement,marriage, and so on. The fact that these are notcompletely guaranteed for Dōwa area residentsis, in itself, discrimination.’7

The 1969 Dōwa Projects Special MeasuresLaw’s first article framed the matter as follows:

‘Following the principles of the JapaneseConstitution that guarantees the enjoyment ofbasic human rights to all nationals, this lawshall clarify the goals of the Dōwa Projects,which the state and regional municipalities areto conduct cooperatively in areas wherehistorical and social factors have been anobstacle to the stability and improvement of theliving environment etc., and through theimplementation of the special measures neededto achieve these goals, will foster economicstrength in these target areas, and contributeto improved stability and welfare in residents’lives.’

Human rights were seemingly not the only orcentral consideration, however. Article 5out l ined the Dōwa Pro jec ts ’ goa l s :‘improvements in the living conditions in targetareas; the promotion of social welfare; thedevelopment of industry; the stabilization ofemployment; the enhancement of education;the strengthening of human rights protectionactivities’. That five out of the six goals wererelated to economic issues is not coincidental,but connected to the rise of economicbureaucrats such as Ikeda Hayato and SatōEisaku in the LDP governments from the 1960sinto the 1970s.8 In turn, this can be related tostate-directed economic development and anti-communist policy.

The National-Security Basis for the PostwarBuraku Affirmative Action Program

While the constitution provided a basis for theethical-legal argument that the governmentwas obligated to provide assistance to Burakuareas and residents, the level of assistance thatensued must be understood as a factor not justof political and bureaucratic concern withhuman rights and economic development, butalso of state concern with national security anddomestic politics. According to Sasaki Ryōji, inthe 1950s, the existence of a Dōwa MeasuresSpecial Committee within the Liberal

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Democratic Party’s Policy Research Section, aswell as Buraku-related debates within theRegional Improvement Deliberative Committee,and the first Kishi Cabinet’s promise toestablish a deliberative committee dedicated toBuraku issues, were all evidence of concernsabout public order, and especially perceptionsof the risk of “radicalism” in Japanese society.9

At the time, it was the Japan Communist Party’saim to realize a united front based onagricultural and industrial workers, bringingtogether the masses across class and statuslines, to constitute the core of a new force toconduct a revolution against imperialism andmonopoly capitalism.10 It was also the SocialistParty’s position, that ‘there can be no liberationof the workers without the liberation of theBuraku’.11 Sasaki details how the LDP’s SpecialCommittee for Public Order Measures,discussing the possibility of the sociallydowntrodden forming a united radical front,mentioned socialists, communists, anti-baseand anti-nuclear activists, anti-constitutionalchange activists, the Japan Teacher’s Union,and the destitute, the unemployed, and thedowntrodden as potential candidates forrevolutionary activity, and proposed socialinclusion and cooptation to minimize this risk.In 1958, the LDP’s Diet Member Dōwa ProblemDiscussion Group produced a documententitled “Recent trends in the BurakuLiberation Movement”, in which it noted thatthere was a real danger of the Burakumovement joining up with the JCP and otheroppositional forces to form a unified radicalgovernment. Given that the movement was notyet radicalized, there was an opportunity tostrike early, it proposed.

In the wake of this report, the Buraku-relatedbudget went from 224 million yen in 1958 to466.36 million yen in 1959, with quiescent orcooperative “model areas” receiving the majorportion of this budgetary uptick. Theestablishment in 1960 of the Dōwa MeasuresDeliberative Committee and subsequent

Buraku infrastructural projects were, Sasakiargues, part of the political-bureaucraticestablishment’s drive to prevent the formationof any unified radical front. The fact thatrepressive treatment of dissident forces wasdifficult under the provisions of the newconstitution, and that the development ofunderdevelopment meshed with Japan’sstrengthening focus on economic growth, werealso factors underlying a considerable infusionof funds into Buraku areas.12

Active government interest in the DōwaMeasures Deliberative Committee, once itsestablishment had been announced in 1960,seemed minimal, and it was late in 1961 before11 bureaucrats and nine civilians were namedto the committee.13 Although it commissionedthe report, Sasaki states that the governmentitself did not send representatives to theDeliberative Committee meetings, which werebasically run by the bureaucracy. Nor did thegovernment respond to questions on the issue.Sasaki’s thesis is that the government engagedin Buraku-related development policies tofo res ta l l the poss ib i l i t y o f Burakuradicalization, and that this convenientlydovetailed with the government’s aim ofmodernization to coopt opposition forces, butdiscrimination was not its main concern.14

The Dōwa Projects Special Measures Law andits effects

Four years after the Deliberative Committeereport, in 1969, the government passed theDōwa Projects Special Measures Law,15 whichwas extended several times before beingsuperseded by the Regional ImprovementProjects Special Measures Law of 1982, whichitself was revised and extended several timesbefore ultimately expiring in 2002.16

The DPSM Law declared that the state wouldendeavor to improve residential areas, housing,roads, welfare facilities, and so on. It would

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also take measures to modernize primaryindustries in Dōwa areas, along with steps torationalize and modernize small and mediumsized enterprises based therein. To boostemployment rates, training and other programswere to be established, along with programs topromote higher education. Finally, steps toimprove human rights were also promised.Importantly, the state promised to cover thecosts of such programs, allowing municipalitiesto obtain funds using municipal bonds that thestate undertook to purchase (Article 9). Thesuccessor to this law, the RIPSM Law, waslargely the same as the DPSM Law, but withadded stipulations that such projects shouldshow consideration to the relationship withsurrounding non-Buraku areas (Article 2), andthat the central government would cover twothirds of the cost of infrastructural projectsconducted in Dōwa areas by municipalauthorities (Article 3). There was repeatedment ion in the law of how i t was theresponsibility of regional authorities tocooperate with central government authorities,and subsequently, prefectural and municipalgovernment spending in fact increased rapidly,to eventually account for more than double theamount of central government spending.

DPSM Spending

Under the auspices of the DPSM Law, central,regional and local governments spent a total ofaround 15 trillion yen, mainly on physicalimprovements, in the years …?. Sewagesystems, roads, and housing were constructed.Community facilities such as meeting places,public baths, medical clinics, and so on werebuilt. Further, at the municipal level, a widerange of affirmative action measures wereimplemented. Extra teachers and staff wereallotted to schools, childcare facilities, andcommunity centers. Funding was provided forschool lunches, stationery, school trips, highschool costs, after school sports, and job

training programs. Housing rent reductionswere granted, as were land tax reductions andexemptions. Cash gifts were provided forbirths, marriages, and job hunting. Jobs weremade available by affirmative action involvingboth private corporations and local publicgovernments.17

The Evolution of Government Budgets18

Pre-warYuwabudget

1920-1941cumulative total

Peak year percentage of totalbudget 1933

22,000,000 yen 237,000 yen 0.1% (2.3 billion yen)

Post-warDōwabudget

Centralgovernmentcumulativetotal1969-2002

Prefecturalgovernmentcumulativetotal(1969-1993)

Municipalbudgetscumulativetotal(1969-1993)

Peak yearpercentage oftotal budget1981

4.291 trillionyen

2.8 trillionyen

6.9 trillionyen

0.2792trillion yen0.6% of 47trillion yen

State and local government affirmative actionprograms targeting Buraku areas expandedsuch that up to 0.6% of the state budget and amuch greater proportion of prefectural budgetswere directed at material and socialimprovements in Buraku areas. In the 1970s,Kōchi prefecture at its peak was spending 15%,Nara and Wakayama prefectures over 10%, andOsaka prefecture 3.5% of their budgets onBuraku-related projects. In Osaka’s HabikinoCity, total spending on Dōwa-related measuresreached an all-time high of 32.2% of all cityspending, and 75% of all city constructionspending, while in Higashi Osaka City, 21.9% oftotal city spending and 75.5% of total cityconstruction spending went to Dōwa projects.In Matsubara City, 33.5% of the municipalbudget and 76 .3% o f the mun ic ipa lconstruction budget went to Buraku projects.19

The Targets of DPSM-related Spending

To administer the DPSM Law, some newterminology was invented. Namely, the law wasespecially intended to bring about material

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improvements in Dōwa areas. Article 1 of theDPSM Law defined these as ‘areas wherehistorical and social factors have been anobstacle to the stable improvement of the livingenvironment etc.’ As this rather vaguedefinition suggests, the manner in whichcertain areas became designated Dōwa areaswas flexible.

In response to a question from HigashinakaMitsuo, a JCP member of the House ofRepresentatives from 1969 to 2000, about howa Dōwa area came to be designated as such,the government answered in 1974 that therewas no clear official definition. ‘Localauthorities make determinations in the field’.20

In practice, these local authorities weregenerally dependent on the advice of ‘localstakeholders, organizations, and movements’.21

Fundamentally, the dominant factor in manycases was either of the two main associationsdedicated to fighting discrimination againstBurakumin: the Buraku Liberation League(BLL: Buraku Kaihō Dōmei), which had closeties to the Socialist Party or the NationalFederation of Buraku Liberation Movements(Zenkoku Buraku Kaihō Undō Rengōkai, oftenabbreviated as Zenkairen, although now it isknown as the Jinkenren, having expanded tocover human rights issues generally, ratherthan just Buraku liberation), which had closerties to the Japan Communist Party. In manycases, these organizations advised municipalauthorities about which areas were or were notBuraku.

The conditions for accessing Dōwa benefits andassistance for individuals included being acertified Burakumin, and living in an officialBuraku, or a Dōwa area. As well as guidinglocal administrations’ determination of areas asBuraku areas, in many areas, Burakuorganizations also determined people’s Dōwastatus. For residents in such areas, if a Burakuorganization vouched for one’s bona fides as aBurakumin, it became possible to receive Dōwascholarships, tax reductions and exemptions,

subsidized childcare, and so forth. In someareas, the BLL held a monopoly on suchdeterminations, while Zenkairen and the LDP-affiliated All-Japan Assimilation Association(Zen Nihon Dōwakai) were in the same positionin a few locat ions. Overal l , mult ipleorganizations were recognized in many areas,while Tokyo, with no Dōwa areas, conducted itsown Dōwa program of benefits to individualsbased on decisions by city office officialsconcerning “Buraku origins”.

Dōwa recipient determination in selectedareas22

BLL ZenkairenNationalDōwaAssociation

Non-specificorganization

Multipleorganizations Other

MaebashiCity,Gunma;OtsuCity,Shiga;TottoriCity;NagasakiCity; KitaKyushuCity,Fukuoka

Ibaragi Kofu City,Yamanashi

Osaka City;Tsu, Mie

Oita City;OkayamaCity;KagoshimaCity,TakamatsuCity,Kagawa;YokohamaCity; Kochi;Urawa City,Saitama;Saga City,MiyazakiCity.

Without anydefined Dōwaareas, TokyoCity providedDōwa benefitsto individualsbased on self-declarationsand aninterviewconcerningorigins,ancestors, andexperiences ofdiscrimination.

Generally, living in a Dōwa area and being amember of the local neighborhood associationsufficed to be recognized as a Burakumin.23

Thus, migrants from non-Buraku areas werenot necessarily excluded from such Dōwabenefits. People who moved out of Dōwa areas,however, generally lost access to benefits. Itshould also be noted that these benefits werefor Dōwa household residents in Dōwa areas.The definition of a Dōwa household was ahousehold in which at least one person was aBurakumin.24 “Mixed households” wereconsidered simply as Dōwa households in thesesurveys, and the Dōwa population presumablyincludes some percentage of “outsiders”.

Housing Stock Improvements

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Much Buraku-related public spending, andsubsequently much of the DPSM budget, wasspent on the construction of public housing toreplace inferior housing stock. In Buraku areasaround the country, public funding was used torenovate or rebuild 18,165 houses in the1960-1969 period, and a further 45,014 housesin the 1969-1976 period.25 In the two cities ofKyoto and Kobe, public housing for over 15,000households was built from 1953 to 1992.26 InDōwa areas overall, 27.4% of all houses, and47.3% of Dōwa household houses wererenovated or reformed with DPSM Law-relatedfunding.27 The construction or renovation ofexisting housing had the effect of providingresidential housing of a quality that wasreasonable by the standards of the time, andwhich, measured by floor space per resident,was similar to that enjoyed by the population asa whole by the early 1990s.28

Selected Conditions in Dōwa areas 1992-199329

Buraku areas Nationalaverage

Homes on roads < 2m widthor no road access 8.8% 10.2%

Homes on roads 2-4m wide 33.6% 30.9%Residential land area < 50m2 4.7% 6%Residential land area 50-99m2 18% 17.7%Residential land area >500 m2 11.2% 10.4%1-2 room housing 4.3% 14.8%7 rooms or more 28.1% 21.3%Average room numbers 5.5 4.9

Changes in Educational Outcomes

In terms of the non-material effects of theDōwa policy, national statistics show a notableconvergence between Buraku and non-Burakuareas in terms of educational progression.Whereas high school matriculation rates wereabysmal in Buraku areas in 1963 at just 30%,compared with 66.8% in non-Buraku areas,they rose rapidly through the period of rapideconomic growth, to surpass 50% in 1967, andto reach 87.5% in 1975, when the national

average was 91.9. In just twelve years, Burakuhigh school graduation rates nearly tripled, toapproach the national average. Thereafter, thenational average reached a plateau in the mid-to-high 90s, where it has since remained, whilethe Buraku average reached 91.2% in 1992.Locally, some significant variation still existsbetween different Buraku areas. In Hyōgo, forexample, Buraku area school districts’ highschool matriculation rates varied between75%~95% in the first half of the 1990s.30

Educational Convergence: High SchoolMatriculation Rates31

High SchoolMatriculation 1963 1967 1971 1975 1979 1983 1985 1988 1990 1991 1992 1995

NationalRate 66.8 74.5 85 91.9 94 94 94.1 94.5 95.1 95.4 95.9 96.7

Buraku Rate 30 51.1 72.8 87.5 89 86.6 87.3 89.2 89.6 90.2 91.2 92.4

By the early 1990s, the gap between nationaland Buraku high school matriculation rates hadclosed to just a few points. The education gapbetween Buraku area residents and the generalpopulation appeared to be largely resolved as apolicy issue in terms of secondary schooling.University matriculation rates appeared to befurther apart. From a gap of 23.2 percentagepoints in 1979, when over 37% of youth wenton to university nationally whereas in Burakuareas the corresponding figure was just over14%, the Buraku university matriculation rateinched up to 19.9% in 1991, against 31.6% forthe whole population. Today, the nationalaverage is well over 50%.

However, these statistics on Buraku tertiarymatriculation rates compiled by the GeneralAffairs Ministry cannot be taken at face value,Suginohara argues, because the figure is basedon the percentage of high school studentsliving in Dōwa areas and receiving DōwaProjects Special Measures Law-relatedscholarships who went on to university. Sinceless than half (43.6%) of Dōwa area high schoolstudents were receiving this scholarship, andmany Burakumin no longer lived in Buraku

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areas, it seems likely that the proportion ofBuraku background students going on touniversity is higher than indicated, and that thegap in tertiary education matriculation rates istherefore smaller than it looks.32

Educational Convergence: UniversityMatriculation Rates33

UniversityMatriculation 1979 1983 1985 1988 1990 1991 1992 1994

NationalRate 37.4 35.1 30.5 30.9 30.5 31.6 32.7 36

Buraku Rate 14.2 16.5 19.1 19.3 19.7 19.9 20.8 24.3

Changes in Occupational Outcomes

Along with living environment and educationaloutcomes, occupational marginalization wasalso seen as a major problem when the DPSMLaw came into force. This was considered toappear in relatively high percentages of Burakuresidents receiving Livelihood Protection(social security), higher unemployment levels,greater concentration of workers in smallenterprises, over-representation of Burakuworkers in relatively backward industries, andBuraku worker under-representation in white-collar middle-class sectors. Together, thesefactors meant that average annual incomelevels in Buraku areas were lower than thenational average. Again, by the early 1990s,most of these differences had shrunkconsiderably.

Buraku and National Employment Rate in %34

Employmentrate Buraku National

1967 55.8 65.31971 64 63.51977 60.9 61.91985 58.3 61.41993(Nat:1992) 60.6 63.9

In terms of the overall employment rate, therelevant figure for Buraku areas in 1967 was55.8%, which contrasted with the nationalfigure of 65.3%. However, in 1971, thedifference had temporarily disappeared, withthe Buraku figure even overtaking the nationalfigure, hitting 64% as opposed to 63.5%nationally. Booming demand for workers in thecourse of Japan’s rapid economic expansionmeant national demand for junior high schoolgraduates increased dramatically, from 1.09jobs per graduate available in 1955, to 3.72jobs per graduate in 1965, and 5.96 jobs pergraduate in 1975. The increase in demand forhigh school graduates was even more dramatic,going from 0.72 jobs per graduate in 1955 to3.5 jobs in 1965, and then 8.36 jobs pergraduate in 1975. This shortage of workerscreated a situation in which many Buraku youthjoined the workforce, as shown by theincreased rate at which Buraku residentsbecame regular employees in the 1970scompared to older generations, and inrelatively larger and more stable corporations,often with administrative jobs.35 Althoughminor fluctuations are recorded through the1980s and early 1990s, the employment ratedifference for Buraku and non-Buraku areaswas basically within a few points.

Jobs available per graduate 1955-1975

Demand as a% ofavailability

1955 1965 1975

JHSgraduate 1.09 3.72 5.95

SHSgraduate 0.72 3.5 8.36

Company Employees from Buraku areas, byAge, Company Size, and % of clerical workers,

1975

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Age rangeCompanysize / type

50-59 40-49 30-39 20-29 15-19

500+workers 15.3% 18.2% 17.3% 21.1% 21.6%

1-4 workers 29.2% 22.3% 20% 13.5% 8.9%Clericalworkers 7% 8.6% 6.5% 20.6% 18.2%

Regular Employees in Buraku Areas by Age,197536

60-69 51.5%50-59 65.6%40-49 68.5%30-39 68.4%20-29 82.9%~19 86.2%

Viewed in terms of the industries that Burakuresidents worked in, the most notabledifference with the national population as awhole was a striking over-representation inpublic service, at 10.8% in 1993 versus 3.1% inthe population as a whole. This figure, areflection of affirmative action in localgovernment employment until the 1990s, hassince decreased. The proportion of Burakuresidents employed in construction was alsohigh, at 17% in 1993 against 9.5% in the entirepopulation. Again, this is considered to berelated to the massive investment ininfrastructural improvements under the DPSM,and the employment of local residents byproject contractors. The percentage of Burakuresidents involved in wholesale and retail, aswell as services, was by contrast somewhatlower than for the general population.

Employment by Industry for Buraku areas(1967-1993) and nationally (1992)37

　 1967 1971 1977 1985 1993 1992Primary industries 31.8 27.4 13.5 10.3 7.7 6.4

Wholesale / retail 12.7 11.7 15.6 12.2 14.6 22.2Services 7.8 9.1 14.6 12.4 16.8 23.4Mining / manufacturing

3323.3 27.8 21.1 21.5 23.8

Construction 15.2 16.6 16 17 9.5Transport andcommunications 5.4 5.3 4.6 4.5 8.7 6.6

Public service nd 3.8 6.2 12.7 10.8 3.1Other 9.4 4.2 1.1 10.7 2.8 5

The annual income levels of employed workersreveal, however, that Buraku residents wereconcentrated at the lower end of the scale.Whereas 28.8% of workers nationally wereearning less than 2 million yen yearly in 1992,43.1% of workers in Buraku areas in 1993 werein the same income bracket. Fully 76.7% ofBuraku residents were earning less than 4million yen, compared to 59.9% nationally. Thegap for those earning between 4 and 7 millionwas somewhat lower, with 22.3% nationallyversus 16.2% in Buraku, but widened againabove that amount such that whereas 4.1% ofBuraku residents were earning over 7 million,10.4% of the general population had earningsexceeding that level. While labor marketinclusion appeared to have been realized,vertical occupational segregation had by nomeans been overcome.

Workers in Buraku Areas and Nationally byAnnual Income Level (10,000 yen)38

0-99 100-199 200-299 300-399 400-499 500-699 700-999 1000+Buraku1993 21.8 21.3 20.5 13.1 8.3 7.9 3 1.1

National1992 14.2 14.6 17.5 13.6 10.4 11.9 6.9 3.5

The Livelihood Protection (seikatsu hogo) ratefor Buraku people in Dōwa areas was 5.2% in1993. This was more than six times higher thanthe general rate for the wider regions in whichDōwa areas existed, which was 0.8%. Therelevant figure for non-Buraku people inBuraku areas was 2.9%. Interestingly, thenumber of people who had been on LivelihoodProtection in the short and medium term wassmaller for Buraku people than for the regionalaverage, with 5% and 10.5% in the Burakucases as opposed to 10 .1 and 14.9%respectively for the wider region. It was in the

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area of long-term welfare dependency thatBuraku rates were much higher than for thewider region, at 46.5% as opposed to 36.9%.The figure also varied considerably betweendifferent regional Buraku areas, ranging from0.5% in the Kanto area to 5.8% in the Kinkiregion, and up to 7.5% and 7.7% in the Kyushuand Shikoku regions respectively. One factorthought to be behind this relatively high rate oflong-term dependence on social security is thefact that many municipalities introduced lessstringent requirements for Buraku residents torece ive we l fare , thus encourag ingdependence. 3 9

Overall, in view of these statistics, it was widelybelieved that the various DPSM Law-relatedmeasures had basically realized their aims bythe ealy 1990s. In 1996, the “SummaryCommit tee Report” by the RegionalImprovement Measures Joint Committeeoutlined the legal and concrete measures takensince 1953.40 It stated that the situationregarding material conditions was generallyresolved, in the sense that significant statisticaldifferences with other areas were no longerdiscernable. While it noted that 30% of Burakuresidents reported having been the victims ofhuman rights violations, and that problemsregarding education and work did still exist, itconcluded that ‘viewed overall, these specialmeasures have, in the time limit of the existinglaw, generally been able to achieve their goals.’The promises outlined in the constitution hadlargely been realized. Given this, there seemedno need for any further special laws. Anyremaining issues should be dealt with undergeneral welfare provisions. The assumptionwas that as Buraku disadvantage receded, sotoo would discrimination, promoted further byhuman rights education. Gradually but surely,the gap was disappearing, and one day, Japanwould no longer have a Buraku problem.

Explaining the Gap

Some of the remaining gaps were attributableto residual historical disadvantage and theeffects of discrimination. Lower levels ofeducation and higher rates of socio-economicexclusion for older residents entail lowerincome levels. Another factor is the smallerproportion of Buraku residents who wereworking for large enterprises. In 1993, only10.6% of workers originating in Buraku areaswere classed as working for large corporationswith over 300 employees, whereas 23.3% ofworkers in the general population wereemployed by large corporations. Since largeenterprises tend to offer not just increased jobsecurity but also higher salaries, this too, hasan important impact on salary levels.

Additionally, however, it is necessary to make amore general point about these statistics. Out-migration from Buraku areas is frequent. YagiKōsuke, who specializes in Buraku sociology,estimates that between 50% and 100% ofyoung educated Buraku residents with stablejobs leave their communities for other areas.41

The 1993 national survey indicated that acrossthe country, 49.9% of youth aged between 25and 29 had moved out of Buraku areas.42 InOsaka, Futakuchi Ryōji calculates that 26.1% ofBuraku residents moved out of Buraku areasduring the ten years from 1990 to 2000.43 InKyoto, the local branch of the BLL declaredthat the numbers of the highly educated strataaged in their 20s and 30s had “fal lendramatically” during the 1990s, with a drop inDōwa area populations of over 40%, from14,075 in 1984 to 12,590 in 1991, down to8,172 in 2000.44

Those who leave Buraku areas seem to bedisproportionately the younger and bettereducated residents. If they were to be countedeven after their departure as “Burakumin”, thelevels of educational achievements forBurakumin would rise correspondingly.Furthermore, these departures also tenddisproportionately to be those who enjoyrelatively stable jobs and salaries. If they were

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to be added to the salary tables, then theincome levels for Buraku would also riseconsiderably.45 The statistical gap betweenBuraku and non-Buraku populations issomewhat exaggerated, in other words,because the better-educated and better-paidpeople tend to leave Buraku areas, andthereafter are no longer recorded asBurakumin.

At the same time, as Buraku residents withhigher educational credentials and stable jobsmove out, vacancies arise in Buraku area publichousing, which is made generally available.New residents, many of whom are not Dōwa,tend to be poorer, less educated, older, andsingle. They are attracted by the availability oflower cost public housing.46 Single mothers arereported to be common, drawn by theavailability of childcare, public housing,schools, and extra-curricular services, which allhave historical roots in past Dōwa projects.Yoda has recently concluded that longer-termBuraku residents are, compared to recentincomers, relatively better-off, and that Burakudiscrimination is no longer a matter of Burakupoverty.47 What is needed today, to stay inkeeping with the spirit of the constitution, maybe a general policy for the socio-economicallydisadvantaged, rather than a specific policy forBuraku areas and Burakumin. Given thestrengthening official line of ‘self-reliance’, assymbolized by the 2002 law on the promotionof self-reliance by the homeless, the likelihoodof this seems low at present.

When is a Buraku no longer a Buraku?

Bi-directional migration and population mixtureare, in fact, transforming many Buraku areasand their populations, to the extent that thecategory itself is in some cases losingcoherence. Non-Buraku residents in Dōwaareas were calculated to constitute 28.1% ofthe total Dōwa population in 1971, risingrapidly to 39.2% in 1975, and then 41.8% in

1985. In the 4,442 Dōwa areas surveyed in1993 when the last national Buraku survey wasconducted, the number of Buraku householdsand people accounted for around 40% of thetotal in Dōwa areas, with the non-Dōwapopulation and household percentage around60%. To what extent can areas in which themajority of people are no longer “Burakumin”be said to be Buraku?

Official Dōwa (Buraku) Areas and PopulationThrough Time48

Surveyyear

Areanumbers

Dōwahouseholdnumbers

Dōwapopulation

Dōwa%

non-Dōwa%

Dōwa %ofnationalpopulation

1993 4,442 298,385 892,751 41 59 0.721987 4,603 328,299 1,166,733 58 42 0.971975 4,374 315,063 1,119,278 61 39 1.011971 3,972 277,137 1,048,566 72 28 11967 3,545 262,343 1,068,302 67 33 1.071962 4,160 1,113,043 1.161958 4,133 1,220,157 1.331935 5,361 999,687 1.441921 4,853 829,773 1.46

Mixed living of Buraku and Non-Burakuresidents in Buraku areas

1971 1975 1985 1993% ofoutsiders 28.1 39.2 41.8 58.65

Dōwa Area Burakumin and Non-BurakuminPopulation Data

Surveyyear

Dōwaareanumbers

Householdnumbers Population

Areatotal

Dōwahouseholds Area total Dōwa-related

persons

1993 4,442 737,198 298,385(40.48%) 2,158,789 892,751

(41.35%)

1987 4,603 569,662 328,299(57.6%) 2,010,230 1,166,733

(58%)

In some prefectures such as Nagano and

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Shimane, Buraku areas are recorded as havingless than 20% Burakumin populations. In Osakaand Fukuoka, the proportion is around 50%,while in Hyōgo, Shiga, and Kyoto prefectures,the percentage is over 80%. Basically, in thefirst type of prefecture, Buraku areas, definedby majority Burakumin populations, havebasically disappeared. In the second type,Buraku areas and people are becoming hard todiscern. Only in the third type can we state thatthere is a possibility that Buraku and Burakupeople exist in a relatively straightforward andobvious manner. Overall, the difficulty or evenimpossibility of reliably establishing who is aBurakumin, and the increasingly andsometimes overwhelmingly non-Burakupopulation of Buraku areas, indicate that thegroup boundaries between Buraku and majorityJapanese are eroding.

Non-Buraku residents in Buraku areas byprefecture49

Non-Buraku%

Prefecturenumber Prefectures

10-19% 4 Ishikawa, Yamanashi, Nagano, Shimane20-29% 5 Ibaragi, Tochigi, Niigata, Nagasaki, Ōita30-39% 3 Gunma, Chiba, Shizuoka40-49% 2 Saitama, Osaka50-59% 2 Toyama, Fukuoka60-69% 2 Okayama, Yamaguchi70-79% 5 Gifu, Hiroshima, Saga, Kumamoto, Kagoshima80-89% 2 Kōchi, Hyōgo

90-99% 9 Fukuoka, Fukui, Mie, Shiga, Kyoto, Wakayama,Tottori, Tokushima, Kagawa

100% 2 Nara, Ehime

The End of Group Boundary Policing

The rate of intermarriage formerly functionedas the clearest indicator that there existed adefinable group of Burakumin. High levels ofgroup endogamy were a sign that groupboundary policing was taken seriously. Forexample, during the Occupation era, theintermarriage rate was estimated at about 8%.Today, this situation has changed considerably.

The 1993 national survey of Dōwa area

populations indicated, for instance, that thepercentage of mixed marriages in Buraku areasoverall was around 36.6% of all Dōwamarriages. Obviously, this figure did not coverintermarriage rates for out-migrants. If formerBuraku residents and their descendants wereincluded, the figure would be much higher.This figure is also for all marriages, includingthose contracted decades ago whendiscrimination was stronger and isolationdeeper than at present. When the data isbroken down by age, the percentage of mixedmarriages rises to over 70% for those under 30years of age, in the early 1990s. Already in the1990s, the vast majority of new marriagesinvolving Burakumin seem to have beenintermarriages. As the older generations thatdid not often engage in intermarriage passaway, and the younger generations for whomintermarriage is the rule become a statisticalmajority, today the overall rate of mixedmarriage is probably well over 50%. If the vastmajority of young Burakumin today continue tomarry outside of the Burakumin group, groupborder policing can be said to have basicallyended. Not only in terms of mixed residence,but also in terms of population mixing throughmarriage, borders between Buraku and non-Buraku are porous.

Mixed marriages as a % of marriages in Burakuareas50

1951 1963 1977 1985 19938.2% 13.4% 24.9% 31.6% 38.9%

Mixed marriage rates by husbands' age band

29 orless 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70 or

more72.8 66.4% 48.4% 33.4% 23.5% 17.1%

Opinion Polls on Intermarriage

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The data concerning employment, income,education, mixed living and intermarriage areunequivocal evidence of the assimilation ofBuraku into the mainstream. Even so, it is alsotrue that discrimination and prejudicedattitudes are reported to be common. Howmuch weight such incidents and data should begiven, in light of the high incidence of mixedliving and intermarriage, is an important issue.Is the actual incidence of intermarriage of moreimportance, for example, than the percentageof people who have reservations aboutmarriage with Buraku people?

Consider data on opinion surveys regardingmixed marriage between Buraku and non-Buraku people. Alongside the national Dōwaarea survey of 1993, an opinion survey of thegeneral population was also taken. The resultsindicated that the percentage of married non-Buraku people who would not accept such amatch for their children was relatively low, at12.7% (combined total for “never accept”, and“reject if there is family opposition”). Lookingat other more recent municipal surveys fromaround the country, the percentage of peoplewho choose similar responses tends to bearound the same level or lower. Those whowould accept such a marriage withoutreservations are at over 40% for the varioussurveys, while the percentage of reluctantacceptance is around 20% for the more recentsurveys, whereas it was 41% nationally in 1993.Sakai City is an outl ier in having lowacceptance rates and high rejection rates.51

In the case of single people asked what theywould do if their partner turned out to be froma Dōwa area, only around 20% said it wouldmake no difference to them. A proportionbetween 30 and 40% for the more recentmunicipal surveys said that they would seek toobtain their parents’ permission before goingahead with the marriage. A small percentagesaid that Dōwa origins in themselves wouldmake them break an engagement, whilesomewhere over 10% said that they wouldn’t

marry in the face of family or parentalopposition.

Collated surveys52 (married persons): If yourchild planned to marry with a Dōwa resident:

How wouldyou react?

National 1993n=4,080

KitakyushuCity 2015n=2,527

Nagoya City2015 (n=1624)

Hyōgo 2013n=1,210

Sakai City2015n=2,850

Tokyo 2014n-1573

Accept it. 45.7 43.4 54.5 47 13 46.5Reluctantlyaccept it. 41 29.2 19.9 20.9 26.5 19.4

Reject it iffamilymembers areopposed.

7.7 4.2 2.3 2.7 16 (tend toreject) 2.9

Never acceptit. 5 4.2 3.1% 4.8 4.4 4.3

Don’t know n/a 14.8 15.2 19.9 36.8 27

Bi-directional migration and population mixtureare, in fact, transforming many Buraku areasand their populations, to the extent that thecategory itself is in some cases losingcoherence. Non-Buraku residents in Dōwaareas were calculated to constitute 28.1% ofthe total Dōwa population in 1971, risingrapidly to 39.2% in 1975, and then 41.8% in1985. In the 4,442 Dōwa areas surveyed in1993 when the last national Buraku survey wasconducted, the number of Buraku householdsand people accounted for around 40% of thetotal in Dōwa areas, with the non-Dōwapopulation and household percentage around60%. To what extent can areas in which themajority of people are no longer “Burakumin”be said to be Buraku?

Collated surveys (single persons): If youplanned to marry with a Dōwa area person:

If there was familyopposition, wouldyou:

National 1993 n=921 Kitakyushu 2015 Nagoya City 2015 Hyōgo 2013

Marry anyway 17 19.6 21.8 15.5Convince parents andthen marry 62.8 39.1 40 32.3

Not marry if familyopposition wasstrong

16.8 13 10.3 11.1

Wouldn’t marry 3.4 3.4 2.4 5.9Don’t know n/a 21.1 21.6 31

Saitō has previously noted that the decline inarranged marriages, from which Burakuresidents were automatically excluded fromconsideration, and the shift to love marriages,in which Buraku residents were not excluded

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automatically, is an important factor explainingthe increase in intermarriage. Further, due toaffirmative action promoting educational andoccupational opportunities for Burakuresidents, more and more Buraku residents areincreasingly eligible candidates for marriage.These factors have enabled int imaterelationships to increase in number. However,this increase has been accompanied by a rise inthe number of relationships that havefoundered when the issue of marriage hascome up and the “discovery” of Buraku ties hasaroused anti-Buraku prejudices. Whileintermarriage has become the dominant formof marriage for Buraku residents, it still meetswith some level of opposition anecdotally and inopinion polls.53

In a 2014 survey by the Kyoto City authorities,factors of concern in the case of marriage forrespondents and for respondents’ childrenrespectively, included: personality andcharacter (84.9% and 82% respectively),occupation (47.8% and 55.8%), nationality orethnicity (39.3% and 39%), disabilities (36.2%and 42%), then Dōwa area origins (31.1% and33.9%), following by academic credentials,lineage, and single parenthood.54 Likewise, anOsaka prefectural survey of 2010 found that20.6% of respondents classed Dōwa areaorigins as ‘something to be concerned aboutwhen thinking about marriage’.55 Similar trendswere recorded in Tokyo in 2014 as well.56

Nationally, a 2012 survey by the Cabinet Officehad 37.3% of respondents giving opposition tomarriage as the most common form perceivedto be taken by the Dōwa problem.57

Clearly, whatever the precise reason, manypeople think that it is common to avoid Burakupartners in marriage. This indicates thatdiscriminatory attitudes have by no meansdisappeared. At the same time, it appears thatthe existence of discriminatory attitudes is notnecessarily a strong barrier to intermarriage.To understand this apparent paradox, in whichthere is a statistical tendency for most Buraku

marriages nowadays to be intermarriages, evenas surveys of consciousness indicate thatconsiderable numbers of people would prefertheir children do not marry Burakumin, wemust take into account the fact that thisquestion is hypothetical. As Noguchi argues,how people feel about a marriage with a realperson from a Buraku is not something that canbe deduced directly from opinion surveysasking how people feel about a marriage with ahypothetical person from a Buraku.58 This isclearly why the rate of people answering “don’tknow” has ranged between 14.8 and 36.8percent for married persons, and 21.1 and 31percent for single persons, in the surveysabove.

In reality, prospective marriages, and familysupport for or opposition to such marriages,are likely to occur within contexts in whichthere is typically some degree of everydaysocial contact, such that people would have alevel of personal acquaintance with the otherperson or persons in question. However, thissurvey question is not posed regarding such a“real” person. Rather, it is posed regarding“someone from a Dōwa area”, or implicitly, aBurakumin. If respondents don’t actually knowany Burakumin, they are being asked whetherthey have a positive or negative image ofpeople from Dōwa areas.59 In fact, most peopleprobably don’t know any “real” Burakumin,especially as the processes of residential andfamily mixing and assimilation progress. Thislack of acquaintance, in all likelihood, hasmajor implications for the maintenance andreproduction of Buraku discrimination.

The End of "Real" Burakumin and the Recyclingof Burakumin Stereotypes

Whether to achieve liberation in Japanesesociety from Buraku discrimination whileremaining Burakumin, or to seek the erasure ofthe categories of Buraku and Burakumin fromJapanese society in the process of achieving

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liberation and becoming “regular Japanese”,has been a prominent issue in debate betweenespecially, but not only, people associated withthe BLL and Zenkairen (now Jinkenren). TheBLL side has tended to take the formerposition, and the Zenkairen-affiliated side hastended to take the latter.60

Members of the Buraku Liberation Leagueat the group's national assembly in Tokyo(2015).

The BLL has tended to push for the formationof a kind of Buraku ethnicity, and encouragedpeople to “come out” as Burakumin.61 In areaswhere some variant of this position isprevalent, physical markers such as memorialstatues and inscriptions, museums and“Liberation Halls” are made visible.62 The genreof “Buraku history” may also be seen as anexample of this. Exemplifying this stance, Ōtawrites that since the 1970s, ‘efforts have beenmade to uncover and continue’ traditional“Buraku performing arts” from the earlymodern period especially, in the hope ofboosting Buraku pride in the accomplishmentsof Buraku forebears’.63 Calling these “Burakuperforming arts”, given that diverse statusgroups performed them, is questionable.However, it does reveal the tactical use ofhistory for the purposes of creating and

maintaining an ethnic-type Buraku identity.Similarly, exhibits of, for example, the “cultureof drum-making”, or “Buraku food culture” atlocations such as Liberty Osaka, the OsakaMuseum of Human Rights, also are made tonarrate a kind of “Buraku genealogy”.

During the twentieth century, exclusion anddiscrimination helped bring about the creationof a Buraku identity opposed to Japanesemajor i ty ident i ty . This proved to bestrategically useful for establishing andmaintaining a liberation movement. In today’scontext, the assertions of Buraku identity andhistory may perform a somewhat differentfunction. Joseph Hankins has written about howthe existence of minorities such as Burakumin,Ainu and Okinawan people, Zainichi Koreansand so on, can be c i ted by those of acosmopolitan bent64 in order to buttress anarrative of a more liberal Japan that is movingaway from often-criticized myths of mono-ethnicity, and towards recognition of itsmulticultural past and present. By recognizingminority groups, and taking policies to fostertheir inclusion and to ameliorate theirdisadvantages, Japan can be represented as aprogressive and liberal state in the global era.For such a narrative to be convincing, however,minorities must be visible, and show their“groupiness” through cultural symbols, forexample, as in the case of Ainu, Korean, andRyukyuan language and clothing, Burakuoccupations and products, and so on.65 TheBuraku identity and pride movement obviouslycan help to build a foundation for valuingformer ly deva lued ident i t ies , to beacknowledged and respected by majoritysociety, while also assisting in the creation of anew and more inclusive narrative of Japanesesociety. But it remains a highly contestedstrategy in the Buraku context.

Taking an opposing position, the Osaka lawyerand former Osaka governor and then mayorHashimoto Tōru, in a speech to the Osakaprefectural assembly, said “I grew up in a so-

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called Dōwa area, and I am of the opinion thatthe Dōwa issue is not at all resolved […]. Thegeneration before mine thinks that theysuffered from Dōwa discrimination. But mygeneration thinks that Dōwa measures have,ironically, fostered discrimination.” Byproviding special measures, by making Burakuareas visible, by encouraging people to identifyas Burakumin, material improvements wereobtained, but discriminatory consciousness andpractice were also maintained, he concludes.During his stints as governor of Osakaprefecture and then mayor of Osaka city, astream of decisions at prefectural and citylevels shut down Dōwa-related facilities, whichwere renamed, repurposed, or privatized toerase traces of the special measures. ‘If youwant to resolve all the problems of so-calleddiscriminated Buraku, then as far as possible,we should get rid of things that have servedtheir purpose and make them into ordinaryareas. There’s no need to leave “concretesigns”. It’s necessary, in fact, not to.’66

This is similar to the position taken by residentsin the many Buraku areas that turned downDōwa status during the Special Measures Lawera.67 Quite a few small Buraku in Shiga, themajority of Buraku in Kanagawa, and allBuraku in Toyama and Tokyo, for example,decided against Dōwa classification in trying tojettison their Buraku status.68 It is estimatedthat over 1,000 Buraku locations were nevercovered by the Dōwa Projects Special MeasuresLaw.69 Various indicators suggest that it is thistendency to seek assimilation, rather than tomaintain difference, which has strengthenedover time.

After the DPSM measures expired in 2002,many BLL branches that had only existed inorder to obtain benefits were rapidly dissolved.Cuts in public works projects that hademployed many Buraku residents also led toweaker adherence to the BLL.70 Referring tothis flight from the BLL after the end of theDōwa special measures era, Yagi commented

that, ‘When poverty comes in the door, loveflies out the window’.71 This trend is evident inthe dramatic drop in BLL membership and itsdecreasing ability to mobilize voters for specificpolitical candidates. From 1962 onwards, aBLL-backed candidate always took aproportional seat in the House of Councilors,until 2010, when Matsuoka Tōru managed just68,119 votes and lost his seat in a proportionalrepresentation district. (BLL membership isunder 70,000 now). This contrasts with the114,136 votes that he obtained in 2004—a dropof over 40,000 in six years—but the biggestcontrast is with the previous situation, whenMatsumoto Jiichirō, and his nephew and heirEiichi, successively won over half a millionvotes in four consecutive elections.72 Thisinability to mobilize voters is taken to signifythe waning influence of the BLL.

A tendency for Buraku organizations todisband—stating that their purpose forexisting, namely, the resolution of materialdisadvantage, had been achieved—emergedalready in the 1990s.73 Recently, the NaraPrefecture Federation of Buraku LiberationLeague Branches stated that ‘The Burakuproblem is no longer a major problem forBurakumin’ and dissolved in 2010.74

The lessening of material disadvantage by the1990s was instrumental in weakening Burakucommunities. Because of the success of Dōwapolicies and the postwar liberation movement,many people in Buraku areas were able tomove out. Even if they stayed, they were ableto live in larger residences with more roomsper person, and enjoy more individual space.They were better educated, and usually went tohigh schools outside of the local area, withfriends outside the Buraku area too. Moreoften, in gaining employment, they workedoutside of Buraku areas, and also more andmore commonly moved out of Buraku areas.Buraku identity or rootedness faded as aresult.75

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Viewing these trends, Suginohara Juichi, aleading scholar of the Buraku issue longassociated with Zenkairen, wrote that ‘as aremnant of feudal status discrimination, Buraku/ Burakumin as real entities have alreadydisappeared, and the vast majority of peopleare no longer concerned with the issue’.However, he went on to add, ‘some people areminimizing real change, and say discriminationis still strong, and want laws and projects, andtry to re-create Buraku and Burakumin aspermanent different groups, and talk aboutcoexistence, and this is what I call a falsetheory’.76

Most Buraku residents, past and present,clearly are not choosing an ethnic-type Burakuidentity. Most are less and less concerned withmaintaining Buraku identity and dealing withdisadvantage. Some of the trends thatSuginohara refers to are irrefutable. However,his dismissal of discrimination is controversial.Yagi writes, ‘There is no truth in the claim thatBuraku discrimination has disappeared. Weshould say, it exists today, but its invisibility isdeepening daily. It’s “there” but ‘invisible’ or‘getting harder to see’, that’s the actuality’.77

Who Burakumin are is increasingly hard tograsp, and Burakumin themselves arebecoming less motivated to live as Burakumin,but discrimination against people imagined tobe Burakumin still continues, he proposes.Hatanaka Toshiyuki too, has described theactuality of the Buraku issue similarly. For him,it is a dual phenomenon, which continues toexist, but also does not exist. For those who areignorant about the issue and who do notdiscriminate or are not discriminated against,there is no Buraku issue, and this group isthought to be increasing. But at the same time,for those who discriminate and who arediscriminated against, there is still a Burakuissue.78

In fact, as with the case of opinion surveysabout marr iage and actua l cases o fintermarriage, the gradual assimilation of

Buraku residents and their consequentdecreasing visibil ity may be thought,paradoxically, to be linked to reports ofincidents of discrimination. As Burakuresidents move out, mix with other populations,and give up Dōwa status, they tend not to makeBuraku identity a big thing in their lives. Infact, it seems, most prefer to keep quiet aboutit. Thus, Noguchi has written about how‘Buraku origins are made other, even byBurakumin themselves’. Even among peoplewho are aware of shared Buraku origins, ‘it’snot talked about, as though it’s not somethingyou should know.’ Basically, he says that thereis a kind of Buraku taboo even amongBurakumin. 7 9

This virtual taboo has long existed for non-Buraku people. Historically, the BLL tactic ofs t r o n g l y a n d p u b l i c l y d e n o u n c i n gdiscrimination made non-Buraku people avoidtalking about Buraku issues. Various branchesof the Buraku Liberation League declared thatto ask, investigate or to say whether an areawas a Buraku was in itself a discriminatory actthat would lead to denunciation.80 This gaverise to a situation in which non-Buraku peopleavoided the topic altogether.81

In the context of a generalized silence by non-Burakumin and Burakumin about the Burakuissue, most people have little access to imagesof “real” Burakumin. The sociologist MiuraKokichirō cites an essay by one of his studentsas illustrative of this tendency: ‘There are areasthat long ago used to be called Buraku. . . Wedon’t know who lives there, and what kind oflives they lead… Buraku are strange places’.82

In imagining who Burakumin are, and whatthey are like, this “strangeness” based onignorance risks leading people to rely on theirimagination and the stock of frequentlynegative historical stereotypes. The lack ofvisibility of Burakumin in the post-Dōwameasures era may be allowing the ghosts ofpast Buraku stereotypes to re-colonize people’simaginations.

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Internet-based comments and musings aboutBuraku issues are exemplary of this. KawaguchiYasufumi has found that online searchesrelating to Buraku tend to give as their top-ranking results, (as indeed they do for searchesrelating to zainichi Koreans or “foreign crime”),an array of webpages that are characterized byhate speech, ignorant prejudice, discriminatoryattitudes, and problematic information. Theseissues can be seen in the controversysurrounding the actions of Tottori Loop (a.k.a.Miyabe Tatsuhiko), who has engaged in severallong-running legal battles with Burakuactivists.

Arguably, the most important incident has beenMiyabe’s online posting of pre-war lists ofBuraku locations and surnames. In the past,such lists were infamously used by somecompanies and universities to identify anddiscriminate against Buraku people. Activistsfear that making access to such data availableto anyone with an internet connection will leadto people searching for Buraku areas andpeople, posting or sending abusive messages,discriminating against Buraku people, and soon. As for Miyabe, his logic is that such listswere inaccurate to begin with, have no reliablerelation to real Buraku because of urbandevelopment and population movements, andthat it’s not possible to objectively ascertain ifsomeone is a Burakumin or not in terms oflineage anyway, because household registrationdata records have been sealed for severaldecades.83

"They told us, 'You mustn't go there.'" Anant i -d i scr iminat ion ad on dōwaneighborhoods aired by the KagawaPrefectural government.

Rather than take issue with Miyabe’scontention that there aren’t any “real,objectively provable Burakumin”, Kawaguchiargues that the problem is that some peoplewill, in ignorance and with prejudice, use thedata to identify and discriminate againstcertain places and people associated withthem. Presumably , i f there were nodiscrimination and prejudice, then the postingof such data might be acceptable. But becauseof this still-present risk, he proposes that lawsshould be revised to make it easier to erasehate speech from the Internet, that Internetservice providers should introduce filters toexclude discriminatory material, and thatpeople such as Buraku activists and theirsupporters must provide counter-informationand rebuttals with concrete and correctinformation about Buraku areas and residentson the Internet.84 Presumably Kawaguchi callsfor increased internet visibility and theprovision of more “correct” informationbecause many people have minimal familiaritywith Buraku areas, history, and people. In thatvacuum, some people satisfy their curiosityabout the Buraku issue using online sources,which range from the unreliable to thecompletely bigoted.

The activist and academic Sumida Ichirō hasdeveloped a similar argument over recentyears. A proponent of the idea that Burakuminshould be encouraged to “come out” asBurakumin, Sumida questions the Burakutaboo. ‘Must Burakumin be treated as thoughthey don’t exist, or as a taboo subject?’85 Hecriticizes a double standard at work in theBuraku movement claiming that Burakuminneed assistance and special measures toguarantee their equality, while at the sametime rejecting the identification of Buraku

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people and locations as discrimination.86 Tohave a relationship in which Burakumin onlyappear in cases of discrimination to denounceit, but remain incognito or even taboootherwise, is not a situation amenable todialogue and resolution, he points out. For him,ignorance and prejudice need to be fought withreality, rather than abstract ideas about“correct education” and human rights.87 This iswhy it is necessary for Burakumin to come outas Burakumin, to dismantle unfoundedprejudices and stereotypes that are able topersist because real Buraku and Burakumin areabsent from public discourse. However,Sumida’s call for Burakumin to “come out”,show their “real lives”, and thereby dismantlenegative stereotypes seems to have little appealwith Buraku residents, present and past. Giventhe strength of trends towards assimilation intothe mainstream, this no longer seems to be aviable strategy.

In Conclusion: The 2016 Law for theElimination of Buraku Discrimination

The Japanese parliament or Diet passed theLaw for the Promotion of the Elimination ofBuraku Discrimination in December 2016 withoverwhelming support. Nikai Toshihiro, thecurrent (December 2017) Secretary-General ofthe ruling Liberal Democratic Party, played akey role in the passing of this law, bringingother prominent LDP figures such as InadaTomomi, then Defense Minister, and KatayamaSatsuki, then Vice Minister for General Affairs,into the drafting committee. His enthusiasm isconsidered to have been repayment for thestrong support that the Wakayama prefecturalBLL office has given him in his electioncampaigns, as well as his longstandingfriendship with a key figure in the BLL.Tanikawa Masahiko, former head of the BurakuLiberation and Human Rights Institute inOsaka, also surmises that the law was draftedrapidly because the LDP is keen to lock in all

and any sources of support in its drive to getthe numbers to achieve constitutional change.88

The law is a very general statement of principlethat calls on the state and local bodies to takeactions, including education, counseling, andresearch, towards the elimination of Burakudiscrimination. Curiously, the six articlescomprising this law do not mention whatBuraku discrimination is. Nor does it touch onwho its subjects and its targets are.

Further, unlike previous legislation, the law isvery clearly not about money or funding. In thedrafting process, the BLL representativeinvited to give a submission to the LawCommittee of the House of Councilors attestedthat the organization was not interested inhaving a law with provisions to fund projects.Miyazaki Masahisa, LDP Member for the Houseof Representatives, told the same committeethat the law had been worded specifically sothat there would be no grounds for anyorganizations to claim project funding.89

The first article of this law is as follows.

Given the continuing existence of Burakudiscrimination; given the changingsituation due to the development ofinformation technology; in accordancewith the Constitution’s guarantee of basichuman rights to all nationals; in the beliefthat Buraku discrimination cannot bepermitted to exist; and considering itselimination to be an important objective,this law sets out basic principles regardingthe elimination of Buraku discrimination,clarifies the responsibilities of the stateand of regional public bodies, andstipulates the expansion of consultationmechanisms and so forth, thereby topromote the elimination of Burakudiscrimination, and thus, to realize asociety without Buraku discrimination.90

More precisely, Article 2 states that central andlocal governments shall cooperate to

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implement suitable measures, while Article 3provides for improved advisory services. Article4 calls for educational and promotionalactivities to be conducted, while Article 5 callsfor information to be gathered via regional andlocal governments, presumably based onopinion polls and surveys of Buraku areas.Article 6 merely states the date of the law’sentry into force.

While welcomed by the BLL as signaling theachievement of a long-held goal, the Kyoto-based Institute for Buraku Problems denouncedthe passing of the law as being more likely tocontribute to the entrenching of Burakudiscrimination rather than to its elimination.This is also the reason given by the JCP for itslongstanding opposition to such a law.91

Actually, this was also the position of theLiberal Democratic Party Policy ResearchCommittee, at least in the 1980s, when it statedi n a n i n t e r n a l d o c u m e n t t o L D Pparliamentarians that “to establish a law forthe elimination of Buraku discrimination as abasic law would lead to the formal encrustationof those discriminated areas and residents, andrisks arousing extremely grave political andsocial consequences. It is fundamentally inopposition with the measures that our policieshave been pursuing.”92

The Law, and debate surrounding its passing,thus echo long-running debates about the beststrategy for the Buraku liberation movement totake, with assimilation and difference as thetwo major options. Dōwa policies, from theassimilationist perspective, were aimed at

eliminating the categories of Buraku andBurakumin from Japanese society. Attempts totry and grasp their increasingly tenuous realityand to express it in terms of officiallydesignated areas and populations seems thus tobe anachronistic, if not positively harmful. Thisposit ion sees no good reason for themaintenance of Buraku identity.

Conversely, for those who adopt a position thatwe might term multiculturalist, it is on thecontrary a good thing for minorities such asBurakumin to assert the right to exist on theirown terms, to maintain and have pride in theirown traditions, and to develop their identities.This is not just because it constitutes a case ofa particular minority asserting its legitimateright to exist and thrive, but also because byhelping to realize an officially more diverseJapan, it contributes to the expansion of therights of all minorities.

In the context of rising hate crimes andintolerance, in Japan as elsewhere, the officialrecognition of certain minority groups mayseem to be quite a desirable result. However,the general trend among people who mightclaim Buraku backgrounds seems to be toreject such an identity. Ultimately, it may bemore desirable, especially given existingconstitutional guarantees of equality andfreedom, to develop people’s ability to makechoices about the identities they choose, and toensure that such choices can be made inrelative freedom from coercion.

SPECIAL ISSUE

A New Constitution for Japan?

Edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Takahashi Shinnosuke

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Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Constitution, Human Rights and Pluralism in Japan: AlternativeVisions of Constitutions Past and Future

C. Douglas Lummis, We, the Japanese People: Rethinking the Meaning of the PeaceConstitution

Okano Yayo, Prime Minster Abe’s Constitutional Campaign and the Assault on IndividualRights

Uemura Hideaki and Jeffry Gayman, Rethinking Japan’s Constitution from the Perspective ofthe Ainu and Ryūkyū Peoples

Noah McCormack teaches International Relations, Sociology, and Cultural Theory in theDepartment of International Relations at Kyoto Sangyō University.

Notes1 These are terms generated by the state and regional administrations for the purpose ofimplementing affirmative action measures. Dōwa areas are basically areas that areconsidered to be Buraku areas. However, not all Buraku areas were Dōwa areas, becauseresidents or authorities in some areas rejected this classification. Also, some areas gave upthe status of Dōwa area, on the grounds that the gap with the rest of society has been largelynegated. The term Dōwa-related persons is seen to refer to Burakumin. However, it onlyrefers to those people within Dōwa areas who are recognized as Burakumin. Many peopleliving in Dōwa areas are not recognized as Dōwa-related persons, because they are relativelynew arrivals, or chose not to receive affirmative action-related benefits. In this article, theterms Dōwa and Buraku are used interchangeably, unless otherwise specified. The lastnational Dōwa area survey data is from 1993; data since then is collated from various localsources.2 Okuda Hitoshi, Dōtaishin tōshin wo yomu, Osaka: Kaihō Shuppansha, 2015, pp. 22-23.3 Takano Masumi, “Nihonkoku kenpō to buraku mondai”, in Tomonaga Kenzo and WatanabeToshio (eds.), Burakushi kenkyū kara no hasshin, vol. 3, Gendaihen, Osaka: KaihōShuppansha, 2009, pp. 20-21.4 Mizuuchi, Toshio, ‘Suramu no keisei to kuriaransu kara mita Osakashi no senzen / sengo’,Ritsumeikan daigaku jinbun kagaku kenkyujo kiyo, vol. 83, 2004, pp. 41-43. In Kanto it isbelieved that Buraku areas had already become hard to grasp as a result of the Great KantoEarthquake, and became even more so as a result of the massive wartime destruction.5 Okuda, Dōtaishin tōshin wo yomu, 24-25; Kadooka Nobuhiko, “Buraku kaihō undō ganokoshitekita mono”, in Akagawa Manabu et al., Dōwa no shinsō no shinsō, Osaka: KaihōShuppansha, 2004, pp. 49-50. Cited constitutional passages from here.6 Shimono Osamu, “Shūshoku sabetsu”, in Buraku Kaihō Jinken Kenkyūjo (ed.), Burakumondai jinken jiten, 2001.

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7 Dōwa Taisaku Shingikai, “Naikaku Dōwa Taisaku Shingikai Tōshin”, 1965.8 Hasegawa Masayasu, Buraku mondai no kaiketsu to nihonkoku kenpō, Kyōto: BurakuMondai Kenkyūjo, 1995, pp. 9-12.9 Sasaki Ryōji, Sengo seiji shihai to Buraku mondai—Kaidō rosen wa dō keisei saretanokaKyoto: Buraku Mondai Kenkyūjo, 1995, pp. 7-11.10 Fudesaka Hideyo and Miyazaki Manabu, Nihon kyōsantō vs. Buraku kaihō dōmei, Tokyo:Monado Shinsho, 2010, pp. 221.11 Japan Socialist Party Central Executive, 1971, “