The United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education started in 1995. This UN initiative has invited human rights education organizations and educators all over the world to share the experiences and to join hands to promote the culture of human rights. This booklet on Dowa education, a Japanese commitment to human rights education, is our small contribution to this UN effort.
Japan has been known as an economic giant with a homogeneous population. People abroad generally think of Japan as a nation free of social problems such as poverty, inequality, discrimination, etc. Did you know, however, that Japan also has minority populations and human rights problems? Did you know that there has been a long history of social movements in Japan demanding educational equality and non-discrimination?
This booklet is an introduction to Dowa education, which has evolved over the past 50 years in Japan as an educational challenge to eradicate Buraku discrimination or discrimination against Buraku people, a caste-like minority population.
Except for a couple of English booklets issued by the Japanese government to outline Buraku improvement measures, most English publications have been produced by our institute in Japan, the Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute, describing the reality of Buraku life, its history, as well as the Buraku liberation movement. In addition, we have been sending out bimonthly English newsletters on Buraku issues (Buraku Liberation News) to nearly a thousand readers overseas since January 1981.
This booklet, however, is our first English-language publication on Dowa education. Our aim is to inform non-Japanese-speaking readers, particularly educators, of the history and practice of Dowa education so that our experiences be recognized properly and shared widely outside Japan.
The idea of publishing this booklet came out of our increasing contacts and dialogues recently with human rights organizations, researchers and educators from around the world. We notice that only a few of them are aware of Buraku issues in Japan, and almost none know anything about Dowa education.
Whenever we have such opportunities to address Buraku issues, we have to explain from the very basics: In Japan we have a caste-like minority population; they are Japanese and indistinguishable physically, linguistically, religiously, culturally; they have been discriminated-against for centuries, etc.
As a result, we often find ourselves not really successful in communicating the entire picture and significance of the challenges of Dowa education. This booklet is intended to rectify this situation, and to establish Dowa education as a new sphere of our global networking.
Past exchanges between Japan and other countries have mostly evolved around Tokyo, which is located in eastern Japan. When researchers and visitors come to Japan to obtain information about aspects of Japanese society, they usually visit government and academic institutions in Tokyo and learn almost nothing about discrimination issues or anti-discrimination education endeavors in Japan. This is partly because such issues are often treated as 'invisible' by mainstream Japanese institutions.
A group of American educators visiting our institute in Osaka symbolically said recently, "We had read nothing about Buraku issues or Dowa education before coming to Japan. We heard nothing about them when we visited the Ministry of Education and universities in Tokyo. Coming to Osaka and visiting schools here, we now know that Japan also has its share of minority issues and active efforts to cope with prejudice; things that are familiar to us."
You may feel as if there are two different worlds in Japan as far as Buraku issues are concerned. Actually, there are a number of Buraku communities in Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures. Roughly, one-third of about 6,000 Buraku communities are located in eastern Japan, and two-thirds in western Japan. Buraku discrimination is alive today in both eastern and western Japan.
Although the educational system is uniformly operated throughout Japan under the same centralized course of study enforced by the Ministry of Education, Dowa education, generally speaking, is impressively conspicuous in Kansai (the second biggest metropolitan region in Japan with cities such as Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Kobe) and in western Japan, while it is rather invisible in Tokyo and in eastern Japan. The difference lies in how Buraku and discrimination issues have been perceived and treated in Tokyo and in Kansai.
The Buraku liberation movement began in Nara in 1922 with the founding of the Suiheisha (Levelers' Association), and Buraku issues have traditionally been treated as priority political, social, educational issues in the Kansai region. Most local government buildings in Kansai symbolically carry slogans saying "We Shall Allow No Discrimination." Kansai local governments have invariably set up elaborate guidelines to promote Dowa education in schools in the 1950s and 1960s. But this regional gap has been little known outside Japan.
The explanation above does not assume, however, that there have been no publications outside Japan on Buraku issues. Actually a number of English books and articles have been published on Buraku discrimination and Dowa education. They have been known to a limited circle of Japanologists and to those who were deeply interested in Japan. Among them, several books published in the 1960s, including some field studies in Japan, have significantly shaped the image of Buraku issues outside Japan. They treated Buraku discrimination as exotic rather than as something common in nature to other forms of discrimination in different cultures.
For instance, these publications illustrated the origin of Buraku discrimination as deeply related to the kind of occupations that Buraku ancestors were engaged in. "They processed dead horses and cows," "They crafted leather products," "They executed prisoners," and "That's why they were despised and ostracized against the background of prevailing Buddhist and Shintoist values abhorring impurity and acts of killing."
This illustration is clear-cut, but it implies that a segment of Japanese population was treated as outcastes because of inherited occupations since time immemorial in the unique Japanese cultural and religious context.
Historical studies have revealed that the members of outcastes come from diverse social origins and the stigmatizing functions were imposed upon them after their outcaste status was fixed. Therefore, we should focus on the political process that created the "four-class plus outcaste" system to implement the "divide and rule" policy. The fundamental issue here is not the unique cultural context itself but rather how the system of discrimination was legitimized by manipulating it effectively.
In the final analysis, discrimination has political, social and cultural functions. It evolves around certain biological, social and cultural criteria. The criteria differ from one society to another: race, ethnicity, religion, language, social origin, etc. Discrimination is the process whereby unequal power relations are legitimized by creating a division between the mainstream and the marginal, according to certain criterion. This process is common to all cultures. So, we should not fail to keep our eyes on this commonality when discussing cultural differences as seen in the process of legitimizing certain forms of discrimination.
Many of these publications were based on cultural-anthropological studies that western researchers conducted in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. They portrayed Buraku life and attitudes in negative images by depending much on non-Buraku informants who were rather prejudiced, as well as on Buraku informants who internalized oppression and a negative identity.
Some of these studies also focused on Buraku radicalism as a reflection of serious oppression. Discourse such as "Buraku people have been so strongly oppressed that they react quite radically against the dominant society and non-Buraku people" is clearly noticeable in these studies. Therefore, Buraku people are described as aggressive, hypersensitive, unstable, etc. Buraku movements are illustrated as violent and extremely demanding. Buraku self-directed action and movement are not treated like other social movements.
The Buraku is portrayed as different and distinct, but with negative connotations. Thus, one problem we identify in these studies that have significantly influenced the knowledge of Buraku issues outside Japan is that they described the Buraku issue as something like a skeleton in the closet of the exotic country of Japan.
Another problem we notice is that these studies did not use insights from historical studies that were rapidly growing in Japan both quantitatively and qualitatively during the 1960s and 1970s. The data and information they used were rather outdated. Also, these studies did not represent the active movement of the Buraku that has led to significant changes surrounding Buraku life, thus failing to portray its dynamic and changing aspects.
We believe, however, that one basic problem lies in the lack of efforts on our part to disseminate information, data and new research findings to outside Japan. This is because several recent English-language publications have treated Buraku issues in a more comprehensive manner and reflected findings of recent historical, sociological and educational studies in Japan by keeping close contact with grass-roots Buraku organizations, Dowa educator's organizations, Japanese scholars of Buraku issues and Dowa education, as well as with our institute.
This booklet incorporates the present knowledge of Buraku history in Japan, the most recent observations by various research studies, contemporary views and analysis of Buraku life, and pressing concerns of Dowa education and its future directions. In that sense, we hope this offers the most comprehensive picture of Dowa education.
In addition, Dowa education constitutes a fundamental pillar of human rights education initiative in today's Japan. To illustrate its outline and major characteristics will presumably stimulate interest among those who are trying to promote human rights education.
Recently we have been receiving an increasing number of inquiries from journalists, scholars, NGOs and students overseas who want to know more about Buraku issues and Dowa education, and to develop collaborative ties with us. We always welcome such inquiries and networking initiatives.
We encourage you to refer to the bibliography in this booklet and to contact us if you have questions or want to know more about Buraku issues. We hope you will find this booklet informative and stimulating enough, and we are more than willing to further exchange information and views with you.