Buraku people did not always submit themselves to the class system. At the end of the Tokugawa Era, 53 Buraku villages in Okayama province united together to protest against the intensified discriminatory practices of the local administration. As part of the effort to overcome the economic crisis, the provincial government instructed the Buraku more strictly on matters, such as what they were allowed to wear, but the Buraku people refused to accept these orders. The monument in the photo was erected at the beginning of the early modern age at a shrine in the neighborhood where the uprising took place. It enshrines the victims of the uprising.

photo by Kiyoshi Makita

|Back|Next|