Japan’s Modernization and Discrimination: What are Buraku and Burakumin?

Abstract

Burakumin (部落民), the largest minority in Japan, are a (re)construction of the modern period, much like race and ethnicity. Since Japan’s modernization, the Burakumin have been discriminated against in various ways; for example, young Burakumin have been driven to suicide due to discrimination in marriage and employment. The terms Buraku （部落） and Burakumin were established during Japan’s period of modernization. They settled in the Japanese language by the early 1900s. Existing studies, however, locate Buraku discrimination as originating in feudalism, or as reflecting Japan’s fixed system of society. Alternatively, Western researchers have attempted to understand Burakumin in relation to India’s system of outcastes. Both approaches are wanting, since the existence of Burakumin has experienced repeated (re)construction and reconceptualizing. Non-Burakumin have been integrated into existing or formed new Buraku communities; for example, this paper explores the formation of four new Buraku in a city where the Japanese Naval Station required a huge supply of day laborers. I show that agreements to supply Burakumin laborers reflected the mobility of capital and bio-power, as defined by Michel Foucault.