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Buraku Problem Basic

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Buraku Problem Basic

Buraku Liberation Education

This term refers to education that aims at eliminating Buraku discrimination and enabling people in and outside Buraku communities to be free from such discrimination. It began to be used actively in the 1960s, primarily by the Buraku liberation movement, along with such terms as “education of Buraku liberation” and “education to liberate Buraku.” It is now common to shorten the term as “liberation education,” which sometimes has wider implications, including liberation from other forms of social discrimination along with Buraku liberation.

The term came to be used partly because it was necessary to differentiate the relevant practices from “Dowa education,” a term which had been used up to that point, and seek for a redefinition of the concept after the end of the World War II. The old term had negative implications because, during the World War II, the education emphasized such nationalistic slogans as “100 Million United for a Sole Purpose” and “Pursuit of the Sacred War,” which contributed to the war of aggression Japan was waging. The National Committee for Buraku Liberation, formed in 1946, organized the Urgent National Assembly for Buraku Liberation in the same year and proposed: “Serious attention must be paid to the radical reform of school education, in particular to what is taught. It is necessary to undertake thorough reformulation of what has been called Dowa education and to introduce teaching content that will promote the solution of Buraku Issues through rigorous pursuit of democratic education based on the spirit of peoples’ liberation.” In school education, however, the term “Dowa education” continued to be used predominantly, although such terms as “education for the promotion of the good,” “welfare education,” and “democratic education” were used in some prefectures. The term “human rights education,” proposed by Morita Yoshinori in 1950, was not widely accepted. This was apparently because “Dowa” had been used consistently as an administrative term and because school educators could not achieve higher levels of practices than the pre-war “Dowa education.”

The term “Buraku liberation education” started to be used consciously and proactively in the mid-1960s. One of the impetuses for this shift was the report of the Dowa Policy Council in 1965. While the report recommended the promotion of Dowa education, it repeatedly argued for “neutrality in education” and clear distinctions between “education and social movements.” In other words, the education envisioned in the report was Dowa education that has no relationship with the Buraku liberation movement, meaning that it focused solely on the development of personal non-discriminatory mentalities without any attention to changing social structures.

Since the 1950s, the government and in particular the Ministry of Education has abandoned the post-war policies of educational reform, with a view to reinforcing the state control over education. In the 1960s, they started to promote meritocratic educational policies in order to support high economic growth. As a result, competition in entrance examinations was intensified in the mid-1960s, which exacerbated the conditions facing children from Buraku communities.

The Buraku liberation movement could not accept what had been promoted in the report of the Dowa Policy Council and the government’s educational policies. Having achieved the free distribution of textbooks in compulsory education as well as the provision of educational aid, Buraku liberation and Dowa education movements recognized the need for further integration of education and social movements in order to guarantee the right of children to learn. As long as they used the term “Dowa education,” the issue of discrimination would be restricted to problems of individual’s mentalities, denying the integration of education and social movements. This situation prompted more and more people to advocate for the term “Buraku liberation education,” which reflected their philosophies more accurately.

In the course of these events, the philosophies of Buraku liberation education were organized into the following main principles:

First, Buraku liberation education must be integrated with the Buraku liberation movement, which itself developed partly as self-education movement, as reflected in its achievement of improved literacy rates. It is impossible to bring up democratic individuals, who can play active part in the complete liberation of Buraku communities, without such integration.

Second, Buraku liberation education must be integrated with politics. Education cannot be neutral. Appropriate political forces and voices should be organized with the logic of education.

Third, Buraku liberation education must be integrated with actual lives and labor. Without basing education on the realities of Buraku discrimination and on aspirations for liberation, as embodied in the histories of living and working people, parents and children of Buraku communities, it is impossible to guarantee the right to education as a social rights and impossible to overcome the discriminatory inclinations of modern school.

Fourth, Buraku liberation education must aim at instilling in learners an awareness of their social position.

Fifth, Buraku liberation education must hold the right to learn as one of the fundamental human rights, namely social rights. In modern society, the right to education has increasingly been understood as one of the social rights, which are essential to lead lives in society, rather than as one of the civil freedoms.

Sixth, Buraku liberation education must be explicitly oriented toward collectivism. The collectivism in Buraku liberation education is different from supremacy of groups over individuals. It is a concept based on the logic of struggle in the Buraku liberation movement as well as on human rights of all.

Seventh, Buraku liberation education must be integrated with anti-war and anti-nuclear peace movements as well as movements of international solidarity. Collective education for anti-discrimination reinforces the international solidarity of various people by paying attention to the issues concerning Korean residents in Japan as well as to the North-South problems.

Eighth, Buraku liberation education must not be dissolved into general democratic education, though both types of education should have close relationship.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Buraku liberation education has been practiced with an increased focus on its interrelationship with human rights education. Collaboration of civil activities and school and other public education has begun to be advocated outside the realm of Buraku liberation education as well. Up-to-date educational movements should be pursued in broad partnerships on the basis of the principles developed by the movement of Buraku liberation education.

Recent challenges include, for example, how to guarantee academic skills for children among Buraku communities. Despite long-standing efforts, the tendency of low academic performances among Buraku children has not been overcome. Since the mid-1980s, comprehensive Dowa education surveys specifically focusing on these issues have been conducted in different areas. The outcomes of these surveys have renewed common understanding on issues of school reform (including, in particular, “class reforms” for overcoming the tendency of low academic performances), on the development of educational capacities of community parents and families, as well as on effective collaboration of these initiatives. Local educational organizations have been established in more and more communities for collective efforts, leading to the emergence of new possibilities of Buraku liberation education.

(Katsura Masataka, Nakano Mutsuo and Mori Minoru)