1. The Subject in Buraku Liberation Theory and Movement

The gender perspective clarifies how the subject, object and purpose of contemporary knowledge, which profess to be universal, scientific, neutral and objective, are actually male-centric, where a person is defined as male, and is a category allowing a cross-cutting analysis of knowledge systems in various sciences and studies. According to Beauvoir, gender is a structure that reproduces asymmetry through the notion of “othering” women, in discriminating against them through their differentiation and marginalization from the subject, which is male. Delphi says that it is a practice of asymmetrical differentiation by the dominant, and Scott, that it is the process of production, maintenance and reproduction whereby “knowledge gives meaning to bodily differences,” and a social and political practice to explain politics and power structures marked by sexist discourse.

This means, then, that in thinking about the Buraku issue from a gender perspective, a fundamentally critical consideration of the existing body of knowledge on the issue is required. I face difficulty and unease in this  task because it will lay bare the politics of the matter, but wish to attempt it anyway, because I think there is a need to discuss power effects and functions in the social production of knowledge about the Buraku issue, through efforts to critically revisit theory and practice from the perspective of gender in discourse on Buraku history and research and the Buraku liberation movement.

I begin by looking at the formation of the subject in the movement and the process by which it is created, the discursive practices of differentiation, according to Butler.

a) Subject Formation as “Mother”

In the subject formation of Buraku women in the movement, the genderized subject of the mother, as a normative principle, is attached great importance and has supported the movement on the whole. Such women have played an enormous role in the movement for the right to life and guarantee of work, and equal opportunities in literacy, education and childcare. This can be seen in their expressions as follow: “I don’t want the next generation to suffer from Buraku discrimination,” “I don’t want my children to be burdened with the pain and sorrow of Buraku discrimination,” “I don’t want my children to go through what I have,” “I want to raise my kids well,” “I want my kids to be happy,” and “I want to give my kids a stable life.”

Discursive practices of participants at events like the Buraku Liberation National Women’s Meeting show that the category of “women” is reinforced because their concerns cannot be discussed outside of the positioning whereby the person or subject is male. This is evident from their reports on daily practices and the response of of male officers of the movement to them when they have raised issues of concern. The resulting sense of crisis felt as women, and the sense of calling as mothers in daily life have become reasons for them to join the movement, and the Women’s Division emphasizes their subjectivity as women to actively work for change in the sphere of childcare, education, living conditions, nursing care and welfare. The importance of such issues are constantly raised at meetings, but the demands are framed not to bring about reform in the movement itself, but as issues regarding the independence of, and as issues particular to, women. Along with housework and taking on the role of “good wife and wise mother” in the contemporary family, Buraku women also undertake the same responsibilities within their community and take on the role of “good wife and wise mother” within a patriarchal organization by fulfilling gender roles in the execution of decisions made by community leaders.

b) Women Absent in Subject of Buraku Liberation Theory

The more that Buraku women criticize society’s gender structures, the more their concerns are reduced to that of women’s identity and differences as women, considered “women’s issues” and “problems peculiar to women.” Issues that relate to women are not considered of universal concern, and are debated only within the framework of the Women’s Division. They are dealt with in a structure segregated by gender whereby women only perform a supporting role. Buraku women have been “othered” as women who have suffered multiple discrimination and/or as strong mothers who have fought the same, and the movement is strengthened by the subject formation of Buraku women in this context. Thus, we have a paradox where this reinforces the universality of the issues that men must deal with and the prerogative of a scheme where the person or subject is male. Women do not exist in the subject of the Buraku liberation movement, and being a woman itself is stigmatized. Thus, as long as women are not recognized under male standards, they cannot survive. They are expected to produce and show logic and theory in the same way as men, as a way to stand up to outside criticisms and help legitimize their point of view. At the same time, a power effect is in motion whereby men provide the theory and women do the practice. All the while suffering Buraku discrimination, Buraku women are being asked to become gendered like Buraku men, who are working towards becoming like “normal” men, and at the same time to become gendered women in the same way as non-Buraku women. The more theory and practice develops on Buraku women’s subject formation/building and the Buraku people become even more gendered, how are Buraku women to engage in subject formation?

Isaja Kim has observed: “When she expressed her concern as a woman in this ethnic organization, she was seen merely as a troublemaker and a woman who complained too much. A strict patriarchy existed whereby women who did not follow the men were scoffed, looked down upon and excluded and a world where only women who played a supporting role to their activist husbands were accepted.... The men’s organization, which welcomed women’s liberation in theory, and the women’s organization, which sought to be protected by the men, formed a relationship of mutual protection, and it again became an orderly community that strictly protected the patriarchy.”[1]

The more we discuss, the more we notice that existing theories and language exhibit a liberation process that is male-centric. If we raise the issue of how we are gendered subjects, as women rather than people, and that we have been excluded from the definition of the person, we are told not to bring personal or private problems into the movement under the banner of “women.” Discourse that is critical of gender structure in one’s own minority community can sometimes affirm Buraku discrimination, or be used as a tool to spread a consciousness that gender discrimination within Buraku communities is worse than outside them. Fearing that their demands will be misused in these ways, Buraku women remain silent about the gender structures in their communities. Thus, the gender structure in minority communities can also be reinforced by Buraku discrimination.

c) The Politics of Solidarity and the Stratification of Liberation

Raising the problem of the subject requires examining at the politics of solidarity, which is the base of the movement. The movement that supposedly seeks solidarity, in fact, entails exclusivity. Use of the movement-prescribed women’s identity is enforced, and constant rejection of the gendered woman’s identity norms brings about many difficulties in subject formation. The more the women try to liberate themselves from self-negation as a Buraku person, they end up in self-negation as women. Not only does this cause them to feel divided, but it causes antagonism and rifts due to identity politics.

At a hearing I attended, Buraku women spoke more about the experiences and thoughts on the home, rather than the Buraku issue. Living in communities that have internalized the patriarchy, and, further, in the home, the women have suffered on a daily basis and found ways to survive this patriarchy, as well as the patriarchy of the workplace and the movement. When they escape from the oppression of the home and the community within the Buraku, they then have to face discrimination in society against Buraku people and women.

There is a big difference in the way that the subject is understood and how subject formation takes places between the men who discuss the Buraku issue and the social discrimination faced by the community and all people originating from Buraku areas, and the women who discuss the experience of oppression and being dominated as individuals in the home. When women discuss their experiences, they are undervalued or denied, and found amusing compared to the logic and political power of a male-centric society. Subject formation in the Buraku liberation movement is for the liberation of men, so caught within the patriarchy of a male society, Buraku women speak of their individual trials. In women’s subject formation as they struggle to survive, the logic of subject formation in the male-centric movement becomes oppressive, causing their self-negation.

Self-liberation and subject formation of women cannot happen in a movement where notion that the person or subject is male forms the foundation of human liberation and subject formation and achievement, and where women play a supporting role in it.

Where the gendered subject is politically constructed, black feminism, postcolonial critique and subaltern studies, arguing that there is no such thing as a women’s identity, have raised the issue to feminists that universalizing the experiences of white middle class heterosexual women and emphasizing only gender inequality has served to deny that gender itself does recognize differences existing among women. In making white middle class heterosexual women the norm in liberation, there are women who are and who are not liberated, creating a stratification in liberation whereby white middle class heterosexual women are central. Applying this to the case of the Buraku liberation movement, Buraku men are the norm and Buraku identity is politically constructed, bringing forth a male-centric stratification and new oppression in liberation and subject formation.

I want to continue to explore distortions in gender discourse in the activities of the movement, in Dowa Measures and in community building, by looking at what Buraku women do for daily survival and studying changes in the role of Buraku women and mechanisms of gender discrimination, as well as in the nature of Buraku discrimination through an examination of social, economic and political changes in the gender framework and gender relations. I seek to elucidate what kind of changes to the gender framework and its construction Buraku women have been able to achieve through new practices, despite being gendered within this historically, socially and culturally constructed framework, as well as whether they have looked at how they have been “othered” and attempted to construct agency to politically resist and create change in the gender structure.

2. Rethinking the Boundaries of the Public and Private Domain

As “The Personal is Political,” gender studies explores the politicization of the private domain, in what is considered “normal” for the family or gender, as well as male-centrism in the public domain, in the state, government and economy that have been considered universal, neutral and objective. I next consider the public/private domain in the Buraku context, looking at reproduction, violence against women, community, family and  labor .

a) The Meaning of “Reproduction” in the Buraku Context

Rethinking the boundaries of the public and private domain in gender studies has brought about a paradigm shift in existing concepts of labor and the discovery of new concepts, such as reproductive labor, housework and unpaid work. There are also some that criticize white middle class assertions that prioritize productive labor in the public domain over reproductive labor in the private domain. Hazel Carby has said that the notion of reproduction raised in the context of black women can become problematic. This is because aside from reproducing the black work force, black women also reproduce the white work force through the service of house work to white households.[2]

Viewed from the perspective of race and class, we can see that the sexuality and reproduction of minority women are used as a tool by the majority to control and manage them. In minority communities, women are made to take on the role of reproducers and mediators in transmitting values, norms and ethnic identity to the next generation. Control of women’s sexuality is given importance, to maintain the “purity” of the group identity and the existence of the community’s next generation.

What about in the Buraku context? One woman was told that she couldn’t marry a non-Buraku man because  their children would be discriminated against. Another was troubled about whether to have a child because she was worried the child might end up discriminated against. One woman married a non-Buraku man and wanted them to raise a child to become an activist through living in a Buraku community. Another woman fought with her husband, both Buraku activists, about which of their communities to live in. One women convinced her non-Buraku husband that, no matter what, she wanted to bear and raise a child in her community. One non-Buraku woman was welcomed to a Buraku upon her marriage to a Buraku man. Another non-Buraku woman struggled hard for her child’s daycare and education, moving to a Buraku to be close to the community. One woman decided  to leave the Buraku to bear a child who would not be tied down by the home or the community.

In gender studies, reproduction has been raised mainly as an issue in the private domain, but the two-fold concept of the public/private domain cannot fully explain reproduction in the Buraku context. Because reproduction for Buraku women is affected by factors to do with their strategies regarding choice in positionality in the public domain and system, and in what they do to survive in it, we can say that reproduction to them is both private and public. This is why we need to rethink the treatment of issues of marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, childcare, nurse care and health of the family in the Buraku community, as well as the meaning of being able to sympathize with “others” and the reproduction of life and labor, and the roles and practices of the women who have fulfilled them.

The issue of sexuality also arises when considering the Buraku issue from a gender perspective. Black feminists argue that oppression based on gender/race/class/sexuality are constructed from multiple historically derived power relations. Why is it that when discussing multiple discrimination in Buraku communities, the issue of sexuality has been made invisible? Why have gays and lesbians in Buraku communities been made invisible and oppressed?

Sedgwick’s notion of homosexuality, which explains gender in the public/private domain (excluding women from the public domain and controlling women in the private domain) and relationships of male solidarity in the public domain through homophobia and misogyny among straight men, is of relevance in understanding the values and norms that place importance in the issues of discrimination in marriage and the reproduction of a heterosexual next generation, as well as the family and mother figure in Buraku communities.

b) The Community and the Issue of Violence against Women

It was the issue of violence against women that caused a paradigm shift away from discussing human rights only in the public domain. Tomomi Fukuoka points out that the method Buraku women have taken to survive discrimination sets the scene for domestic violence, that is, giving excessive consideration to maintaining a relationship with the perpetrator, taking on too much responsibility and being sensitive to the dominant class’ sense of values. She also states that gender and the structure of the Buraku community are factors in the experiences of victims and explains that underestimating violent acts because of sympathy with the perpetrator and criticizing activists are seen as acts advantageous to the enemy.[3]

The connection between minority women and community was also raised at the November 2000 UN Expert Group Meeting in Croatia, when the intersectionality of gender and racial discrimination was discussed.[4] For example, racialized women hesitate to report acts of violence to police authorities because they are afraid of racism affecting them and their community, giving them limited access to legal assistance. They suffer because members of their own communities use customs, traditions and religious practices to legitimize violence against women. They also pointed out that the legitimacy of what is considered “different” in their community norms is denied and that the individual rights of the women in the community are not recognized because the community’s patriarchal norms and values are tolerated as culturally diverse. Minority women find it even more difficult to challenge gender discrimination within their own communities because of the racism they suffer in a culture where they are oppressed. Solidarity and the establishment of identity within the community is necessary to fight racism, so communities, which protect patriarchal norms, end up oppressing women. Even if racialized women suffer violence or their rights are violated within the community, so they keep silent, afraid of being excluded or seen as supporting racism.

Mentally warped because of regularly being looked down upon and discriminated against, and actually suffering discrimination and prejudice, Buraku men have frequently discriminated against those closest to them, Buraku women. It is hard for the women to recognize gender discrimination and make accusations about it in the families and communities that are cooperating to fight discrimination and poverty. The entire community suffers social, political and economic disadvantage and discrimination, so for women to assert their rights or raise the issue of discrimination within the community is seen as betraying it. It is difficult for them to  raise these issues because they are afraid that the stigma against their communities will intensify. There are discriminatory structures that oppress and exclude Buraku men outside the family and community, and Buraku women suffer gender discrimination by those men within the family and community.

In these communities that are shirked and excluded, and because of closed human relations and social connections, the patriarchy, forming the basis of the family and community, causes even greater oppression for women. It is thus hard for people in the community to change their consciousness regarding this. Alienated from education and information, ideas and lifestyle remain unchanged and oppressive relations remain firmly rooted.  Forced to help each other survive poverty and discrimination, cooperating in the community has entailed aspects of restraint and patriarchy.

In the logic of defending, allowing, exempting from responsibility, accepting, sympathizing and understanding those that perpetrate domestic violence, thereby undersizing and legitimizing the acts on the basis of poverty and discrimination suffered, has the intersection of Buraku discrimination and gender discrimination not greatly influenced relations between Buraku women and their communities?

c) The Community and the Gender Perspective

According to contemporary Western values and norms, the family and community have ignored and oppressed women’s identities as individuals, and it is important for women to live as independent, autonomous individuals, freed of the values, traditions and culture of a community bound by the patriarchal family/community and gender. Contemporary civil society has placed importance in the development of the modern family and a civil society that are supported by the principles of individualism, that respect individual human rights and emphasize the right to self-determination. Thus, education is of great importance, and economic, political, social and spiritual independence, autonomy and empowerment essential.

So to end gender discrimination within the community and respect the rights of Buraku women as individuals, is there no choice but to identify the community as the transgressor and work towards its destruction?

In recent gender analysis, rather than using notions and theoretical tools originating from Western history and culture to analyze other societies and cultures within the same uniform category, there is emphasis on the need to use values specific to the region or society, paying heed to its history. Even in the field of anthropology, it is pointed out that the notion of agency is used to focus on the two characteristics that have been ignored in the context of the notion of the individual, being the community and the body, and to understand the weight of individual experience, it is necessary to explore aspects of cooperation, individualism and history.[5]

The Western approach has been criticized in the field of development, and efforts made by aiding countries without ample thought have had the opposite effect of increasing the burden on women and reinforcing gender roles. It is important to understand the diversity and history of each society’s division of labor and gender norms.

Three roles are fulfilled by women in their societies and communities - productive labor, reproductive labor and community management and activities - and we need to clarify interests and gender needs as felt by women. It is important to learn from the local knowledge that Buraku women have accumulated in their daily lives to survive, the choices they have made, and what they have shared within their communities.

It is critical to note that because the women’s experiences are peculiar to Buraku discrimination, the culture they adopt is emphasized as peculiar to the Buraku community, leading to the reproduction of delineations or differences between Buraku and non-Buraku. Because women are made to take on the role of handing down culture and traditions, the oppression and discrimination caused by the patriarchal aspects of the culture are legitimated.

Analyzing the situation from a gender perspective will have a tremendous impact on gender studies, as opposed to romanticizing the women’s survival tactics, strategies and local knowledge, the Buraku vs. non-Buraku structure of discrimination, and the culture born and practiced due to the peculiarities of life in each Buraku. This is because there is insensitivity in the way that the term “Buraku women” is used as a category. I want to be conscious of the danger of taking all the different experiences of the women and reducing them to current fixed categories, of  “Buraku” or “woman” or  “Buraku and woman.”

We must clarify how gender norms in Buraku communities are produced or reproduced and what has led to them, as well as how they affect the life and culture of Buraku communities.

d) Rethinking the Buraku Public/Private Domain from a Gender Perspective

Behind the strong work force of Buraku women is not women’s liberation, gender equality or a rich lifestyle. Rather, it reveals low wages and instability in work situation, the result of the multiple forms of discrimination that they encounter. Because labor rights are civil rights modeled on citizens being men, as patriarchs, Buraku women’s demands have been framed as “women’s labor rights.” And because Buraku women are indirectly affected by how the state secures the rights of workers, who are their husbands, the patriarchs, they struggle for their rights in two spheres: the rights of their husbands as workers, as well as  their rights as women workers, because Buraku discrimination results in their husbands losing jobs and having low wages and unstable work, so that they have to help support the family.

Buraku women demand freedom and equality for Buraku men in the public domain while suffering lack of freedom and inequality in the private domain. Buraku people have advanced their movement against the dominant powers in the public domain while being gender blind to those in the private domain.  In asserting their labor rights, even if the labor market is discriminatory and oppressive labor market and determined Buraku women are valued, oppression and exploitation in house work is not given attention to. The women are trapped between the Buraku liberation movement, which focuses on job security for Buraku men, and debates on gender, which focus on the issue of housework.

It is undeniable that ideas and practices regarding gender have developed amidst debate about social structures, consciousness and actions based on male-female dualism, where the public domain is exclusively a place for market, paid and wage labor and is the foundation of the economic and  industrial system, and the private domain is exclusively for reproductive labor, unpaid work and house work. But Buraku women’s work does not have a place in the gender dichotomy where public domain refers to paid work and men and private domain refers to unpaid work and women. While engaging in labor in the public domain, in the private domain, aside from house work, Buraku women struggle for social security, literacy, education, child care and medical and health services. Even today, it is they who are engaged in community building to socialize child and nurse care and guarantee of employment..

Buraku men, who guide various economic and political organizations, assert their identities as such, demanding recognition of their role and significance in the spheres of economics, politics and production.  Buraku women, on the other hand, prioritize recognition of their role and significance in terms of family and establish their identity in the spheres of family and reproduction. Public issues such as opposition to state authorities and politics and economics are attached more importance than private issues such as the family, community and sexuality. Civil solidarity in civil society (in the public domain) is in a male domain, and women are asked to partake in a joint struggle on issues pertaining to women. Politics is about state authority, and politics in the private domain is ignored.

Elucidating history, politics and economics through the lens of gender reveals successive scenarios of power structures in the public/private domain that have been rendered invisible. Thus, to understand the Buraku issue from a gender perspective, we must elucidate the power structures within it.

3. Gender, Race and Class

Rather than taking a gender + race + class approach, whereby all forms of oppression and discrimination are treated as equal and  new forms are simply added to the list, because each form of oppression and discrimination is different from another, the gender x race x class approach is used, where the forms overlap, thereby supporting other forms of oppression and discrimination.

Chizuko Ueno calls this “multiple discrimination” and explains that it is not just a case where different forms of discrimination simply accumulate and overlap, rather, that is complex, where the different forms are twisted and complicated within the multiple contexts upon which they are based, and one form of discrimination can serve to reinforce or prop up other forms.[6]

With the Buraku issue, instead of considering the discrimination suffered as double (as Buraku and because of gender) or triple discrimination (adding class), we must think about what particular forms of discrimination and oppression Buraku, gender and class discrimination have worked together to produce in the context of Buraku women, that are different from that suffered by Buraku men and non-Buraku women.

According to class reductionism, social inequality in gender, race, ethnicity and so on can be resolved by dealing with class inequality. In discussing the Buraku issue in terms of class, poverty and disparity, it is said that social contradictions converge in the Buraku, and that it is even worse for the disabled, elderly, children, women and single mother households. But this means that unlike Buraku men, experiences of discrimination particular to women are enumerated and and the language of “gender” and “women” are added in dealing with them. Discrimination and rights particular to women are simply supplementary to that of men.

Crenshaw, who discusses the intersectionality of discrimination, raises the problem of over-inclusion in cases when women are disproportionally affected, whereby the effects of racial and other forms of discrimination and the intersectionality of these are not recognized, so that they are put into the framework of “women’s issues” and “gender.” Differences are then subsumed and made invisible. On the other hand, under-inclusion occurs when the women’s experiences are framed as racial and ethnic discrimination and the gap between the minority group and the majority hides the gender aspect, so that a gender analysis is not fully incorporated. Buraku discrimination has concealed differences, and gender has subsumed them.

Gender has not explained the universality of women and gender, rather, it has brought light on the fact that daily discursive practices of differentation have given rise to power. Problems with discourse on the politics of difference and the politics of solidarity then follow. It is argued that raising differences in and problems in power relations within the community cause rifts and make solidarity difficult, and that emphasizing the importance of difference turns people’s eyes away from the issue of differences between the minority and the majority. It is also pointed out that debating discrimination and power relations between women in the context of differences and diversity merely substitutes the assertion that all women are the same. By presuming that all problems encountered by women have commonalities, dominant-subordinate relations among women are concealed.

So how have differences come to be understood in the Buraku context? In debating multiple discrimination against Buraku women which is framed as a “woman’s issue,” have differences among Buraku women and their diversification been left unmentioned because of emphasis on Buraku discrimination, which makes them different from non-Buraku women? Has a critical discussion of the realities and relations brought about by difference not been seen as causing rifts in solidarity? Has the notion of class not been constructed as a theoretical device to suppress difference and, since then, other forms of difference made subordinate to it?

Because existing debate on class is male-centric, in surveys where it is analyzed using the family or household unit, women are subordinate to men, making it difficult to grasp what family members are going through, particularly gaps between men and women. What about in the case of surveys about the Buraku issue?

To analyze inequality as it advances under globalization, the variable of class has re-emerged in gender studies and interest in it as a primary factor in bringing about intra-women differentiation is strong.

Since the 80s, discourse on subjects resulting from different power relations and the debate on the politics of “other” representation has become livelier in gender studies. Mohanty was critical of the “other” representation and the negation of the subject of Third World women in gender studies in developing countries, arguing that it was colonial discourse, with the discursive homogenization of women’s subordination and oppression, universalizing their experiences and thoughts to the point of ignoring and not taking into account historical and cultural contexts.

This also gives rise to the problem of discourse between Buraku and other minority women and the politics of differences and solidarity. Using Buraku women as a model and applying those standards to Dalit women, the latter are produced or represented as a unified group, and in explaining the differences between Buraku and Dalit women using economic and cultural reductionism, emphasis is on the “backwardness” of the culture and equal access to development and aid. This shows “other” representation, which is suitable evidence of universally suffered multiple discrimination that goes beyond cultural and historical contexts, rather than the re-exploration of positionality and roles in the global economy and global politics.

Finally, taking into consideration the advancement of studies about the proletariat and black masculinity, the experiences of Buraku men must be considered from the perspective of gender x race x class. The emphasis to date has been on their efforts to follow in the steps of their predecessors in the public sphere, and on women’s efforts in the private sphere, but we need to re-explore Buraku men from the perspective of gender. Just how much have race and class discrimination affected their masculinity and identity-building and Buraku gender norms? In the Buraku liberation movement, it has come to be understood that Buraku discrimination has played an effect on why Buraku men have been excluded from the market for secure employment, so they have been unable to fulfill the male role of primary laborer or taking on production or wage labor, or the role of head of household and, therefore, main breadwinner, due to unemployment, low wages and unstable work. In understanding Buraku discrimination in this way, the Buraku liberation movement is applying the reasoning that the lives and work of Buraku men deviate from the patriarchal masculinity in capitalist society and from normative masculinity, and that the inability to conform to these is Buraku discrimination. So has the acquisition of patriarchal masculinity in capitalist society and normative masculinity come to been seen as the end of Buraku discrimination? Has the inability to protect women because they are men worsened their feelings of disgrace and reinforced the gender role that men are “supposed to” protect their women?

For me, an analysis of the Buraku issue from the perspective of gender has to end up an analysis of Buraku liberation theory from a gender perspective. And the more I think about the Buraku issue from a gender perspective, the more I run into difficulties in discussing the Buraku issue. I will continue to explore.