Draft:Burakumin in urban spaces

• Comment: There does not appear to be sufficient unique material here to justify separating the material from the base article. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 18:27, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

---

Burakumin in Urban Spaces

Intro

Urbanization in Japan has occurred in a way that is relatively unique to the country given the isolation of the Edo period. Cityscapes following the Meiji Restoration experienced rapid changes over a few decades. Through war times, American occupation, shifting social landscapes, and shifting demographics, urban spaces have been shaped in a unique way in Japan. However, the burakumin people who were victims of the caste system in the Edo Period still suffer discrimination in urban environments due to factors such as urban development policies and address based discrimination. Urban spaces in Japan are still in some ways reflections of the country’s feudal origins and history of imperialism.

History

Burakumin

Under the feudalistic social system of the Edo Period, “the outcaste people at the lowest level of the social hierarchy were called ‘Burakumin’ and in general they could not own land, could only follow specific occupations, and were herded together to live in specified locations”..  Because of this unfair treatment, the Burakumin were deprived of their rights and the privilege to hold any type of occupation that they wanted. They were often seen as outcasts, not just by the term Burakumin they were given but by where they lived. The communities were often referred to as slums or poor people’s regions.

In 1951 a story came out in a magazine, All Romance, called “Tokushu Buraku”, meaning special hamlet. This story said that the Buraku neighborhoods had no tap water, no sewers, and no electricity, and had a high number of crime and gangster activity. This description painted the buraku as inhuman but instead of getting mad about this widespread description of how they lived, the BLL, Buraku Liberation League, used this incident to their advantage. They put the spotlight on the local government and challenged the Kyoto city government authorities and they sought out for them to fix the lack of infrastructure within their communities. This forced the authorities to admit the lack of living standards the burakumin living was lacking. They had no choice but to start building a budget for all the important improvements in the Buraku areas. This was the beginning of the changes within the Burakumin communities. Unfortunately, many of the Zainichi Koreans living in the same areas were left out of the budget and forced to leave.

Years later in 1969 the Diet, House of Representatives, and House of Councilors, passed the Law on Special Measures for Dowa Projects, SML.  This lasted up until 2002. SML was supposed to last up to ten years but it was extended several times before it actually ended, lasting a little more than three decades. The improvements that occurred within this time frame were the physical environment of the Buraku communities, and it also included social welfare programs that provided financial assistance and support, educational scholarships, and subsidized housing. Attempts to help change attitudes within the public school's anti-discrimination programs in Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara. These three areas had the most areas of large populations of Burakumin communities. This paved the way for a strong foundation for BLL projects for decades to come. For a minority movement, the Buraku liberation movement was extremely strong. Over a 27-year period, from 1969 to 1997, they got the National government to invest funds to improve the housing, the housing improvement projects. But when the 1970s began things began to change within the BLL. The opposition parties split apart, and disagreements over the direction of the Buraku liberation struggle became more intense within the BLL between the labor unions, the Japan Socialist Party, and the Japan Communist Party. Following a crisis of factional division in the Buraku Liberation League in 1970, the Japan Federation of Buraku Liberation (JFBL) was established in 1976 with backing from the Japan Communist Party. Regrettably, there was conflict over which of the movement's organizations would take the lead in promoting Dowa projects. It is a reality that this ideological hostility casts a shadow on several Dowa undertakings. Undoubtedly, the Buraku's most deplorable slum-like aspects have been physically defeated, and living and educational conditions have somewhat improved. In recognition of these accomplishments, the statute was permitted to expire in 1997, and as of the end of March 2002, all remaining national program projects were completed.

Thirteen trillion yen in total were invested in these programs, with over sixty percent going toward construction projects like home renovations. For these programs, 840 Buraku were chosen as the target population. After physically decaying houses were demolished, 65,000 public housing units were rehabilitated, and 60,000 new public housing units were constructed specifically for the Buraku people. A total of 72,000 loan extensions were granted for newly purchased homes, while 98,000 loan extensions were granted for home repairs. In total, 295,000 houses were either freshly supplied for or restored, which is almost the same as the total number of Buraku people in Japan. The remaining issues include Buraku that declined to apply for Dowa projects or were not allowed to do so, large-scale urban Buraku where numerous projects are still in progress and will take additional time to finish, and Buraku that were too small to be eligible for Dowa projects.

Many issues remain to be identified. The proportion of public housing in the renovated Buraku is very high, and the rent is also very low—between one-sixth and one-twentieth of the normal public housing rent. Non-Buraku individuals have rarely been able to access vacant public housing, and the tenant selection procedure is not properly handled. These issues are particularly severe at the moment because the Public Housing Law was fundamentally revised in 1996, declaring that preferential treatment for Dowa public housing would no longer be granted. Instead, public housing would now be provided in accordance with privatization, be open to housing market mechanisms, and severely restrict the availability of subsidized housing to the very poor, the disabled, or the elderly.

To enhance living conditions, social welfare, industry, employment opportunities, education, and human rights activities; to remove all detrimental effects that impede the improvement of the targeted areas' social and economic standing, more will have to be done and so they don’t just keep slipping through the government.

Urbanization

Pre-war

Before the Meiji Restoration in Japan, there were only a few major urban areas, and residential segregation was overwhelmingly present due to the caste system of the Edo Period. The cities themselves were sectioned and closed off. Samurai existed at the top of the class structure, and thus had better living conditions within the cities while craftsmen and merchants were left in worse positions depending on the social status. As the economy began to open up to more foreign influences in the 19th century, craftsmen and merchants gained more social capital, and urban areas became more integrated.

The Meiji Restoration led to a drastic restructuring of cities as well, due to many samurai leaving the city after the abolishment of the caste system. This made cities more accessible, not just to craftsmen and merchants, but also to the outcaste group of people referred to in the Edo period as eta or hinin and now called burakumin. However, early industrialization and the rapid integration of lower income groups into urban areas led to the creation of slums. These areas were either made up of Buraku people who had historical roots there, or of company housing inns for industry workers. The government took this as a sign to start putting more policy efforts into urban planning. Cities at the time were also facing a variety of zoning issues due to the lack of urban policy pre-Meiji. For example, there were many cases of rice paddies being in the middle of residential areas. This led to the 1919 City Planning and Land Readjustment Act, which gave the government more power to control urban landscapes.

Urban policy efforts in pre-war Japan were largely focussed on addressing poverty and inadequate housing. One example of this is the Low Standard Housing Clearance and Improvement Act in 1927, which allowed the government to clear out old ‘inadequate’ housing to replace it with denser infrastructure like apartments. The main areas affected by the law were buraku communities and the housing areas for day laborers. This focus continued with the Relief Act of 1932 that gave subsidies to low income individuals. However, as the government was addressing that, housing segregation became a problem once again due to a rise in the creation of suburbs for middle class workers. This created separation between the sprawling suburbs housing the middle class and the more densely populated inner city slums. All in all, pre-war Japan handled urbanization relatively well until war came to stop it in its tracks.

War and aftermath

After the early 1930s, Japan’s urban development was heavily affected by the ongoing wars that Japan was participating in. The industry boom required to sustain the war efforts led to urban decentralization, with new industrial towns popping up around the country.  The war also led to an influx of Korean and Chinese laborers from Japanese colonies being brought in to help keep up with the needs of the Japanese military, where they stayed in temporary camps around the industrial towns.  Towards the end of World War II, the intense carpet bombing attacks that Japan was subjected to led to a drastic decrease in urban segregation, as buildings and institutions were moved in order to avoid the attacks.

After the war, the large-scale destruction that many cities suffered inadvertently created opportunities to rebuild them in better, more efficient ways. However, the urban environment overall after the war was riddled with poverty. The Alien Registration Act of 1947 stripped former colony members of their citizenship rights, putting the workers who brought over during the war in a really bad position, with no access to public housing, limited ability to get loans, difficulty getting work, and to top it all off, inability to return to their home country due to lack of valid passport. Buraku liberation movements during the same time, however, made advancements in securing funds and government support for urban buraku communities.

Economic boom

After post-war rehabilitation in the late 1950s, Japan entered an era of high economic growth. The government focused zoning efforts on suburbs and other infrastructure to bolster the country’s rapidly growing industries. Buraku liberation efforts also made more strides towards securing support from the government on urban policies and discrimination. On the other hand, in doya towns, or day laborer communities, many laborers began to riot for better housing conditions in the 60s, as the towns were typically made up of cheap inns. Protests also led to the implementation of pollution control laws in 1967 in order to cut down on industry-sourced pollution in cities. Urban policy was revamped in 1968 with the City Planning Law, replacing the 1919 City Planning and Land Readjustment Act. The new law aimed to give citizens more of a say in urban planning, and it also aimed to address suburban sprawl, which was being criticized as an environmental issue at the time.

In 1974, the National Land Use Planning Act was implemented to establish zoning categories for 5 different types of land:

1. Urban
2. Agricultural
3. Forest
4. Nature Park
5. Nature Conservation

This law was utilized in combination with the National Spatial Planning Act that was implemented in 1950. It also directed economic policies surrounding land use.

Post-Bubble Economy

The growing bubble economy began to lead to the gentrification of inner city areas, but when the bubble burst in the 1990s, Japanese cities had to find a way to deal with a new wave of poverty. After conducting research and surveys, the government implemented the Special Measures Act for the Support of the Independence of Homeless People to provide concrete policy outlines on how to manage the problem of homelessness in 2002. Lastly, in 2005, the National Spatial Planning Act was revised in an attempt to decentralize Tokyo and reduce congestion and concentrated pollution.

Contemporary Issues

The Burakumin have experienced a range of structural injustices. A portion of the wider inequality picture stems from the marginalization that many buraku groups experience. A typical example of a case of discrimination is that 33.3% of Burakumin are willing to attest to specific instances of discrimination, according to data from the Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute. Most people agree that this rate is much too low. According to the same survey, 46.9% of Burakumin suffer discrimination in silence, and older Burakumin have a tendency to downplay their encounters with it. It is well acknowledged that Burakumin faces prejudice in two important spheres of life: marriage and work. The following constitutes discrimination by victim reporting: 6.8% of people encounter prejudice in the workplace, compared to 24.2% who face it in marriage. Others experience prejudice in their local associations (23.6%), in their jobs and occupations (21.2%), in their school lives (16.4%), and in "other" contexts (7.9%). These are looked at in more detail in what follows.

When it comes to marriage, it is often hard for a Buraku to marry someone who is not a Buraku. It is seen as taboo, something that is unacceptable to most Japanese. In one case in particular that occurred in 2015, a middle-aged, divorced man was thinking of popping the question to a colleague. He first disclosed his Buraku heritage since he had previously encountered prejudice in marriage. The woman didn't let anything stop her from welcoming the man. Gradually, she chose to bring him up to her mother, leaving out his objectives and, of course, his Buraku background. The woman's mother was a cunning woman who promptly gave the detective agency the man's name. The developing romance was cut short.

In 2016, a publisher distributed prints which contained compiled lists of the addresses and names of those living in buraku communities. The publisher also hosted the same information on a website. After being taken to court, the publisher was ordered to take the information down. However, after doing so, the information was quickly reuploaded on another site. While the court was able to rule in favor of the burakumin, there is a lack of enforceable legislation to actually protect them. In 2017, the United Nations Universal Periodic Review even wrote a recommendation to the Japanese government that they increase online protections for burakumin

In terms of urban spaces, buraku communities are still physically marginalized, usually existing on the outskirts of cities as is the case in Kyoto. Also recently, a Kyoto University of the Arts building is being built in Sujin right next to a buraku community. It has displaced burakumin residents, and many have already been displaced by the destruction of their old homes to replace with high density housing. This is a shortcoming of Japan’s modern urban planning policy, and just one example of how many buraku people’s livelihoods are tied with urban spaces and infrastructure that is often out of their control.