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I do not believe this is entirely true. Hashimoto had to change his name to hide his background, for example. Many Japanese are extremely hesitant to speak abou

I do not believe this is entirely true. Hashimoto had to change his name to hide his background, for example. Many Japanese are extremely hesitant to speak about this issue at all; it remains a very sensitive topic. There is evidence of recent employment discrimination and marriage discrimination, especially in western Japan. Japanese silence on the issue speaks volumes. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2009/01/20/issues/breaking-the-silence-on-burakumin-2/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2009/01/20/issues/bre... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin#Social_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin#Social_discriminatio...

jpatokal 9y ago
His mother changed their family name when he was a child. He was "outed" during his first election campaign, but this did him no appreciable harm, and the media made a bigger deal of his father having apparently been a low-level Yakuza gangster. Also, it's difficult to disentangle "extremely hesitant to speak" and "genuinely unaware/doesn't care": as far as I can tell, for most Japanese, the issue is an irrelevant historical relic. Living in Tokyo for years, the only reference I ever heard or saw a single piece of train station graffiti proclaiming that a certain train station was an etamura (derogatory term for buraku village). As noted, around Osaka it's a bigger thing, but the days of employers or prospective inlaws routinely engaging detective agencies to root out any trace of buraku origin seem to be long past. (Although doubtless you could still do this if you really wanted to.) Finally, it's indeed a political issue, and often in unsavoury ways: the article you link to goes into some detail about how the Buraku Liberation League, which has... non-mainstream views on how many buraku there are and how badly they're persecuted, has Yakuza ties and earns considerable profits from government assistance projects.
- panglott 9y ago
  As far as I can tell, the fact that it remains a taboo to discuss means that it remains extremely socially salient. Some of that is the fallout of the 1960s-era denunciation campaigns, which were both seemingly effective and very painful in the context of Japanese values. Most Japanese I have talked to about this view the whole topic as extremely shameful. But with something like this, it would be useful to have some kind of positive indication that it is a historical relic, rather than just something declined to discuss anymore. But any effort to gain real demographic information is seen as a threat, because that's how buraku people were systemically blackballed in the past.

jpatokal 9y ago

His mother changed their family name when he was a child. He was "outed" during his first election campaign, but this did him no appreciable harm, and the media made a bigger deal of his father having apparently been a low-level Yakuza gangster. Also, it's difficult to disentangle "extremely hesitant to speak" and "genuinely unaware/doesn't care": as far as I can tell, for most Japanese, the issue is an irrelevant historical relic. Living in Tokyo for years, the only reference I ever heard or saw a single piece of train station graffiti proclaiming that a certain train station was an etamura (derogatory term for buraku village). As noted, around Osaka it's a bigger thing, but the days of employers or prospective inlaws routinely engaging detective agencies to root out any trace of buraku origin seem to be long past. (Although doubtless you could still do this if you really wanted to.) Finally, it's indeed a political issue, and often in unsavoury ways: the article you link to goes into some detail about how the Buraku Liberation League, which has... non-mainstream views on how many buraku there are and how badly they're persecuted, has Yakuza ties and earns considerable profits from government assistance projects.

panglott 9y ago
As far as I can tell, the fact that it remains a taboo to discuss means that it remains extremely socially salient. Some of that is the fallout of the 1960s-era denunciation campaigns, which were both seemingly effective and very painful in the context of Japanese values. Most Japanese I have talked to about this view the whole topic as extremely shameful. But with something like this, it would be useful to have some kind of positive indication that it is a historical relic, rather than just something declined to discuss anymore. But any effort to gain real demographic information is seen as a threat, because that's how buraku people were systemically blackballed in the past.