The Buraku liberation movement is a popular movement that serves as the primary political body for people living in Buraku. To achieve liberation even while shouldering the risks of discrimination and the social hardships brought about by poverty – that is the core of the Buraku liberation movement.

However, this does not mean that the movement consists solely of people facing hardships. The middle class, consisting of people with some level of economic stability and higher education, plays an important role in the advancement of the movement.

Nonetheless, the role that the minority middle class plays in the movement for minority liberation is truly an ambivalent one. If there are times when they play a pioneering role in advancing the situation of minorities, there are also times when their participation in a movement that is actively trying to disrupt the status quo is passive or even adversarial. This same issue can be seen within the Buraku movement.

In this paper I would like to think about the role of the middle class with a close examination of the publication, “The 30 year anniversary of the founding of the A Branch,” and use it to look back across the history of the Buraku liberation movement in the A community since World War II.

1. The middle class and the original germination of the Buraku liberation movement in the A community

The Osaka Municipal Association for Dowa Measures (below, Municipal Association) was established in February 1953 in a small attempt on the part of the country to bring about Dowa measures. The participants in this association were primarily from the middle class of Osaka’s Buraku. Their participation, however, was not a fight against Buraku discrimination; instead, it was more of an act of charity, an attempt to do something for Buraku residents. The A community was no exception; however, the A community also established a youth group (at the time, a children’s group) which ultimately filled a pioneering role of bringing in the Buraku liberation movement.

The birth of the A liberation movement in the form of the “Youth Group” happened in 1954. Several years prior to that however there had been preliminary Dowa measures enacted in the community, and in that capacity the middle class had joined in the Osaka Municipal Association for Dowa Measures (below, Municipal Association) and had been involved in the movement in some way. In part influenced by these actions, youth from the community, primarily high school students, assembled the children of the community and started study and recreation groups in 1954 with the hope of combating child labor, absenteeism from school and long-term truancy, low levels of academic achievement, and other anti-social issues. This assembly was named “The A Youth Group.” Looking back over the activities of this children’s group, particularly looking at the Anniversary magazine, we see that Kitai Kouichi’s played a particularly important role. Son of the neighborhood commerce (primarily rice and alcohol) manager who was also vice-chair of A’s Association for Dowa Measures, he called for alleviating the predicament community children were in and with Ohga Masayuki and others, started the children’s group and started to work on providing educational support. However, the so-called “let sleeping dogs lie” train of thought was strong in the A community at that time, and the middle class primarily support the Liberal Democratic Party’s major. When they were college freshmen, Ohga Masayuki, Kitai Kouichi and others participated in the first national Buraku liberation youth meeting (1957) at which time their eyes opened to the Buraku liberation movement, and as a result they gradually started to oppose the thinking of the community’s middle class.

At the same time that this was happening, in 1957 there was an incident, known as “The Discriminatory Community Re-naming Incident,” in which a neighboring community opposed being renamed the same name as the A community. The community residents, including the middle class, who up to that point had been anything but cooperative with the actions of the youth group, were faced with the reality of discrimination against their community as a whole, started to doubt the prevailing “if we leave discrimination alone, it will simply go away by itself” ideology, and started to call for a Buraku liberation movement. However, though the middle class was participating in the Municipal Association, they were resistant to the Buraku Liberation League. As a result, though this discriminatory incident provided the basis for the formation of a branch of the Buraku liberation movement in the A community, the middle class ultimately withdrew and the A branch of the Osaka Association of the Buraku Liberation League was formed by only seven people, whose average age was 20.

In June 1959, another incident, called “the Placard Incident” happened. Due to being in truly abject poverty, many students from homes without the resources to buy school supplies or pay for school cafeteria lunch, did not submit their homework and could not afford the cafeteria food. In response to this, the teachers as punishment forced these students to wear placards around their necks that read “I forgot my homework” or “I forgot my lunch money,” made them stand in front of the class, and run laps in the schoolyard. In response to this treatment, the A branch of the liberation league pointed out that the poverty of these children’s families was not simply the result of laziness or lack of effort on the part of community residents; rather, it was the result of Buraku discrimination, the inability to find stable work, and economic hardship. They demanded that the principal distribute textbooks, and because the school itself was struggling to provide adequate education, joined together and turned to the school board for assistance. This was the beginning of an alliance between the school and the community and became the basis for winning several battles around issues of education.

Afterward, as a result of the branch’s efforts in protesting the eviction of residents for the installation of a Shinkansen line, and an accessory Hankyuu line, and their resistance to bureaucratic re-designation of community boundaries, the community’s trust of the A branch increased, and even the previously cold middle class slowly started to come around to support the liberation movement. Also, these activities allowed for solidarity with people outside the community as well, and increased the reputation of and trust for the Buraku liberation movement.

Here, at the first germination of the Buraku liberation movement in the A community, we can see the role of the middle class moving through three stages: first, cold distance, then taking part in the leadership, then finally becoming to some degree supporters of the movement.

2. Dowa measures and the middle class

The decisive transformation of the relationship between the middle class and the Buraku liberation movement in the A community came with the Osaka Buraku Association’s formation of “the Dowa Area Industrial Federation” in 1967. This was the creation of a new movement taking up the middle class concerns around taxation, loans, and commerce leadership as well as the impoverished class’s concerns around education, employment, and housing.

In 1965, in response to those concerns, the Dowa Measures Association suggested a menu of policy-level supports. The primary pillars of this menu were improvement of quality of life, social welfare, employment and industry, education, and human rights protections.

Taking into consideration this type of suggestion, the Dowa Special Measures Law was established in 1969 and with it Dowa measures started to come into effect. The period when the special measures law went into effect certainly overlapped with the height of the Buraku liberation movement, and these special measures had a large effect on the role of the middle class in the A community.

The 30-year anniversary publication provides a history of the branch officer structure since the founding of the branch, and there is a change in the year prior to the establishment of the special measures law that calls for attention. That is, for the first time consultant and advisory positions were provided, and the names of the A community’s entrepreneurs are listed there. The community activities up to that point were successful in mobilizing the community’s middle class and at last actually incorporated them into the actual branch structure.

Osaka city led a movement for Buraku lands and assets to incorporate, and the A Foundation was born. The foundation’s assets consisted in the land beneath the then Higashi Yodogawa Human Rights Cultural Center, the branch offices, and the A Onsen (hotspring) and its land, and these assets are left as the assets of all residents of the A community. This is all thanks to work by Osaka city and the middle class led by Nakata Yoshimasa.

Additionally, the promotion of Buraku industries was also included in the Dowa measures, and the A community Workers’ Union was founded in June of 1968 as recipient organization of those measures. Small and micro-scale enterprises were particularly abundant, and enterprises that faced severe economic conditions received the aid of the Dowa measures, and became a sturdy economic base for the community, contributing to the improvement of instable employment in the community by absorbing the additional working population of the A community. They were also helped by the activities of the branch in a variety of other ways as well.

Additionally, a large new middle class was born in the community as a result of the aid from the Dowa measures. The lives of community residents, which up till then had been plagued by economic instability, began steadily to stabilize as a result of proactive actions providing educational and employment support, and this stabilization gave birth to a lot of public employees and full time employed workers. Many of these workers then were able, in the leisure time provided by having a stable source of employment, to participate in the planning and running of a variety of branch activities, including events such as sports events, summer festivals (Bon-Odori), mochi-making) and participate in branch organizations such as the PTA, the nursery school association, the women’s league, the Orugu[1] group, and the public employees association. As a result, we can see vigorous development of the buraku liberation movement in the A community.

From the 70s to the 90s, with the enactment of the Dowa measures, the A middle class became a primary body in all activities of the local liberation league branch.

3. A’s middle class: their diversifying needs and exodus from the community

However, the progress of the Dowa measures produced another change: they led to the eventual exodus of people from the Buraku.

As I mentioned above, one of the measures included in the Dowa measures, was improving the low quality of life for community residents. This included the improvement of derelict housing in the community, and the construction of public housing. This made it possible for the people of the A community who up until then had by necessity lived in small and poor conditions to instead live in homes “fit for lords.”

However, as these measures gave birth to economic stability and to a new middle class, as I described above, public housing actually came to be seen as a hindrance. There were no elevators, the appeal of small three bedroom apartments steadily declined, and people started moving out of the community. Moreover, the adoption of a sliding scale rent system accelerated this tendency. As people’s income increased, so did their rent. As a result, those community residents who had relatively larger incomes began to want to live in larger private apartments or in their own homes, rather than in public housing.

Additionally, those who got jobs in industries outside the community also, by necessity, were frequently forced to move from the community.

Furthermore, the opportunity to marry people from non-Buraku areas increased, and as a result people from A, particularly those from stable economic classes, left the community.

Of course there were people who, even though they lived outside the community, continued to be registered as members of the branch and supported the branch’s activities; there were even some who continued to be a part of the executive committee. And, there were those among the middle and economically stable classes who were attached to living in the community and participated in the Buraku liberation movement. However, on the other hand, it was the economically disadvantaged classes who were left in the community in relatively large numbers, and those who had gotten divorces after marrying out of the community (by and large this group consisted of women and their children) had to move back into the A community.

In this way, life for residents of the A community became more stable and their quality of life increased as a result of the Dowa measures; however, on the other hand, these measures also invited the exodus of economically stable classes and the back and forth of those in an economically insecure position.

Additionally, the needs of community residents also diversified. The movement to improve education gave rise to many guardians interested in actively protecting education. These efforts helped provide a more stable life and while there was an increase in guardians devoted to educating their children, there was also an increasing class divide from those households that remained in poverty. Both educational and general needs diversified, and the educational movement could not keep up with the new demands. This is potentially one source for a weakening sense of community within the movement.

As a result of the exodus of economically stable people from the community, and the diversification of their needs, we must recognize that now, compared to the movement of the 70s and 80s, the movement has come to a relative standstill. Interestingly, the actions of the middle class have followed the same path.

In Conclusion

I have provided a preliminary examination of the role of the middle class in the Buraku liberation movement, taking the A community as an example. I believe that I have made the role and the effects of the middle class on the movement somewhat clearer.

However, I have also pointed out the stagnation of the Buraku liberation movement in the face of the end of the special measures and the diversification of needs within Buraku. A major issue we presently face is how to overcome this situation, rebuild a branch movement that is responsive to diversified needs, and reassemble a movement for the mutual benefit of both the middle class and impoverished classes.