Thread: Moving to Japan
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Old 09-03-2011, 08:00 AM   #85
Cady Goldfield
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,035
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Re: Moving to Japan

Carl,
Regarding India's caste and Japan's, my words were poorly chosen, or at least unclear; I did not intend to imply that burakumin were on the same level of abuse that India's caste is, but that it's the Japanese equivalent in that a group of people within a society were similarly separated out and discriminated against, and that their classification became hereditary. You are quite right that the degree is not the same, and I apologize for the inaccuracy.

However, as I have direct, personal relationships with individuals who are burakamin, I can attest that despite the illegality of discrimination, burakumin are still very much recognized, discriminated against and screened-for in Japanese society. It is all done "under the radar," and it is quite easy for any family in-the-know to look at the registry at their city hall and deduce, from the villages and areas from which a person's ancestors came -- or sometimes even the Buddhist sect/temple to which they belonged -- whether they are burakumin.

By the same token, one can say that racial discrimination is illegal in the U.S., but if anyone thinks for one minute that this means racism doesn't persist, he or she is sorely deluded.

As for accurate information related to aikido study in Japan, my original response had nothing to do with burakumin, but was a book recommendation in support of your argument that a foreigner could be accepted into Japanese society on some level. The thread spun off temporarily into another direction when Cliff commented on the Japanese feeling a stigma when moving to another region and provided an anecdote; my anecdotal comments on burakumin were simply a response to that.

Best,
Cady

Quote:
Carl Thompson wrote: View Post
This kind of nihonjinron misrepresents people with genuine problems. Also you are not providing accurate information to anyone who wishes to move to Japan and train in aikido. In India it is estimated that over 250 million people have unequal rights due to their hereditary social designation (and if I were to use that fact to tar all Indians with the same brush I would also be guilty of discrimination). It is a far cry from the Burakumin case: the caste was abolished in 1871 - which for comparison is about a hundred years before the end of the White Australia policy. Both have lingering effects in the present but your implication that checking out a person's ancestry is normal for Japanese families, even for just a date is pure fantasy. One's ancestral address (by which one would deduce Buraku status) isn't even on the family register anymore.

Obviously Japan is a unique country, and the kind of bigotry in which one group of humans places themselves above another here only happens with this particular combination of cultural and demographic factors. That may make problems more special (and prone to exaggeration) to some Westerners, but Japan is not uniquely unique.

Carl
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