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229 The word “Buraku,” which literally means “hamlet,” refers to the people from particular communities in Japan, as well as the communities themselves. Their history goes back to seventeenth -century Japan, when several legally determined social castes were designated senmin, or “humble people,” and charged to do specific jobs considered “impure,” such as processing dead cattle and leatherwork. They were restricted in where they could live, and those areas today are designated as “discriminated Buraku communities” or “Buraku.” An 1871 Emancipation Edict abolished Japan’s feudal class system, but the Meiji government failed to introduce policies to eliminate discrimination. Hence, Japanese society continued to discriminate against the Buraku, whether or not they remained in their traditional living areas. The exclusion of Buraku people continued, bringing with it poverty as well as alienation. Even after the Second World War, democratization did not reach into the Buraku areas, and Buraku people were excluded from Japan’s economic recovery. Prevented from gaining secure employment, they struggled to survive. Since the enactment in 1969 of the Law on Special Measures for Dowa Projects (which expired in 2002),1 many improvements have taken place, and visible results can be seen, but problems still exist in such areas as education , marriage, and employment. Deep-rooted prejudice against the Buraku people continues today. Pre-modern discriminatory beliefs, including ideas of purity versus impurity, nobility versus a common lineage, and the patriarchal household have been difficult to erase. To these beliefs one can add such contemporary phenomena as resentment over perceived reverse discrimination and special treatment. Several other ideas—eugenics, meritocracy , and an overemphasis on academic achievement—also help to keep discrimination against the Buraku alive today. Risa Kumamoto Translated by Malaya Ileto Buraku solidarity 16 230 My Own Story My mother was born in 1949 into a Buraku community consisting of forty households located at the foot of a mountain. She is still there today, living by herself in Dowa-sponsored public housing, a stone’s throw away from where my grandmother and my brother’s family live. My grandparents were born in this Buraku, and lived their whole lives there. I lived there for twelve years, from the age of six, when my parents divorced, until I left for university at eighteen. My parents were high school sweethearts, but because my mother was of Buraku origin, their marriage met fierce opposition from my father’s family. My parents eloped, and began their new life together. Later, however, my father’s company went bankrupt. The large amount of debt that my parents had to bear caused their relationship to change. My father’s family looked coldly upon my mother’s plea for help, blaming everything on my father’s having married a Buraku woman. No matter how much they criticized my mother’s precious home, her family, and her life, however, my mother continued to believe in my father. But then my father disappeared, leaving only the debt behind for my mother to bear. As a woman alone and with children, my mother had to work long hours at several jobs to pay back the debts. She could secure only low-paid or nightshift jobs, part-time, with no insurance or holidays. Sometimes she was refused work because of her Buraku origins. She also had to endure repeated background checks, and discriminatory slurs when at work. Because my mother found it hard to rear children and work at the same time, she sent my brother and me to live with my grandparents in the Buraku where my mother had grown up. We moved there in 1978, when I was six years old. I became so accustomed to Buraku negative images that I came to internalize and reproduce the stigma against Buraku people. I wanted to leave the Buraku behind and refused to get involved with Buraku people. I went to a well-known private girls’ junior high school far away from home. There, I measured everything by the standards of wealth and status , and experienced feelings of inferiority and superiority, measuring this environment against the Buraku community. I went on to attend a senior secondary school that had a high rate of students going on to college. For the next three years there, I continued to experience these same feelings. It was difficult to maintain my living expenses, but my family, who had already been through their share of struggles, gave me their full support. They had already had their dreams shattered, their own rights to education...

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