

Home    Japan Travel Guide     Tokyo Guide     Contact     Auction Service     Japan Shop

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Taboos in Japan


Two of the great taboos in Japanese society are the Imperial system and the country's underclass, now euphemistically known as dowa shushin (literally "from the dowa area," which refer to the areas in Japanese cities and rural areas where this underclass was forced to live; dowa is a combination of two Chinese characters that directly translate as "same harmony").

For the former, newspapers use only the most polite verb forms and honorifics when writing about Princess Masako. If they did not, the fascist right would at the very least stir itself into a frenzy, park its massive black sound tracks in front of the paper's Tokyo offices, blare martial music and pro-Emperor rants at ear drum-splitting levels, and demonstrate for days on end--with only mild police interference. Violence and mayhem would also likely occur; an Asahi Shinbun reporter was murdered by suspected rightists in the paper's Kobe office fifteen years ago, and the crime has yet to be solved.


Following the beginning of a liberation movement after World War Two, a group was formed to lobby for the end of discrimination and come to the defense of them: the Buraku Liberaton League (BLL). (They came to be referred to as burakumin--people from the village--in the Meiji Period.)


In spite of the above affirmative action programs, discrimination today is still strongly felt, mainly in Kansai and Kyushu. It occurs primarily in employment and marriage. Unofficial lists identifying burakumin have been found to exist. Companies are said to buy them to weed out possible job applicants; private eyes are hired to check into the background of potential spouses who may be trying to pass as "normal."

(In 2004, a friend in Nara contacted me with a request. Her daughter had become engaged to a man from south Kyoto. The area just south of Kyoto Station is a large traditional dowa area. Since the friend is from Nara, which is close to Kyoto and also has many such areas, she knew there south Kyoto was "you know, a bit dodgy"; unlike someone from Kyoto, though, she did not know exact area, street by street. Thus, she contacted me to have "someone in Kyoto" confirm for her. When shown the address, an older neighbor I have known for many years replied, "Yes, it is a dowa area, but don't tell the mother--and tell the couple not to live there.")

Though their lot has improved--in Kyoto for example certain jobs (city bus drivers, employees in ward offices) give preferential hiring to burakumin, and day care centers provide special services to dowa children--many avenues to success are still closed. Not surprisingly, then, membership in Japanese organized crime draws heavily from these and Korean neighborhoods. (There is a horrible irony in the fact that most nationalistic groups in Japanese society--the yakuza and the pro-Emperor thugs--are often outcastes from mainstream society.)

In Kyoto, the major department stores--Takashimaya, Daimaru, Isetan--all hire ex-cops to work as the number two man, just below the store manager. Their work consists primarily of cost-control, which means fraud prevention. Much of this originates in organized crime, and some from the outcaste community.

In Osaka, for example, the leader of the Asuka-kai--in letter a dowa support group--has been scamming the city over the course of thirty years for millions of dollars thanks to the special treatment afforded his construction and parking lot business. City officials including the mayor and the large banks involved all knew, and, until the man's arrest in May, never said a word because this was part of a "de facto buraku preferential policy," according to one former city councilman.



The BLL, which in the past could be intimidating--centuries of oppression will do that--has yet to officially react. Unlike the predictable caravan of black sound trucks filled with young men with buzz cuts bellowing slogans out of loudspeakers whenever the Emperor is "insulted," however, the BLL recently has tended to be more subtle.

What Osaka and its police are doing though is enforcing the law, which was in itself a taboo until now. How the BLL will react will signal the future of relations between the state and the outcaste community.

Drinking and Dining in Kyoto
Drinking and Dining in Osaka

Buraku Liberation League
Japan: A Reinterpretation


No comments: