DALIT

Untouchability in Japan

The concept of hinin (non-human) was first used in the Nara period (710-784) when a member of the nobility was labelled a non-human for taking part in a treacherous plot against the Emperor. In addition, those who escaped from labour or other services to the Imperial family were caught were also referred to as non-humans. Later, persons for economic reasons became beggars, vagrants or vagabonds were also called hinin.

There was a list of eta-hinin which in the order of prestige ran like the following; local chiefs of ghettos, blind masseurs, dancers, plasterers, monkey-showmen, stone cutters, umbrella makers, river boatmen, mountain guards, material dryers, writing brush makers, straw raincoat makers, puppet showmen and brothel madams.¹

Hinin thus was originally a person in Japan who was disobedient by way of struggling for power or was completely powerless and was living on the edge of society and law. In either case he or she represented a threat to the existing law and order.

The epithet eta meaning much filth in Japan first appeared in the feudal Kamakura period (1185-1333). A minority that was not differentiated from the Eta class were the hinin (non-humans), but later also came to include lower groups which included leather workers, tanners and butchers as well as dyers of cloth material and makers of bamboo goods, entertainers, prostitutes and travelling diviners as well as undertakers and tomb guards².

In Japan the word Sandals (Chandal) was and is even in modern times inscribed, in the fashion of hate crime, on the tomb of a Burakumin in order to mark it out as that belonging to Burakumin (eta) community. Historically, Chandal is probably the most impure grouping both in Hindu and Indian Buddhist tradition.  This concept travelled from India to Japan via the Buddhist tradition.

The Japanese Buraku people however have never accepted the theory of purity and pollution on its face value, as an explanation of untouchability in Japan. A statement from the Burakumin literature is unequivocal:

The present Burakumin are not just composed of the descendants of the former Eta and Hinin, but were also socially reproduced after the so called Emancipation Edicts⁶.

The Burakumin people do not accept any religious explanation for the practice of pollution taboos either:

The overemphasis of the religious aspect and the attempt to explain the discrimination of particular caste merely by their profession finally leads to reducing the occupations of discrimination castes to just those connected with death or blood (butchers, knackers, tanners, hangmen, grave-diggers) and, on the other hand, to excluding other castes from the pursuit of such professions however this does not fit the historical facts since, as can be proved, only a portion of the Eta in the Tokugawa era worked in these professions, but many were active in agriculture or as guards and as guards and had nothing to do with the above mentioned professions. On the other hand, for example, the tannin of white deer skin (shirakawa) in the area of Osaka, was not the responsibility of the Eta, but of craftsmen, belonging to the caste of the ko².

Neither can it be overlooked that hunts or animal-baiting “games” like the inuoimomo, practiced by the ruling classes, were not the object of social discrimination, or that, in the Tokugawa era, the people were forbidden to consume beef but several daimyo and even the sh?gun quite often obtained it from the Hihone hab (now Shiga prefecture). Here it may be seen that the forming of certain religious notions, justifying caste discrimination, is also subject to the ruling classes and can be manipulated by them².

It is not the pursuit of certain occupations, despised by social consciousness, which is decisive for the decline to discriminate against castes, but the social standing of these castes has forced them to pursue despised and undesirable occupations. Furthermore, certain professions became the object of social contempt by the very fact that they were imposed on the discriminated castes and had to be pursued by them…...

….Some of the professions belonging to the monopoly of the discriminated castes, like bamboo or straw, processing, can not be brought into any connection with religious taboos. An interpretation underrating the socio-political connection between castes and professions and seeking to explain the professions pursued by discriminated castes simply “by religious reasons” can offer no plausible explanation as to why bamboo processing for example became the monopoly of the Eta³.

In Japan as in India, it is not because the people who were doing degrading tasks that they were untouchables; it is rather that they are borne into a family which is part of a clan or caste which as historically forced to do these degrading tasks and this enforcement was and is being carried out by other means in the present.

Question is would the Indian Untouchables and the Japanese Burakumin continue to stay in their situation if they were to be given the choice?

For this we have to examine the situation where they refuse to do their assigned tasks. In India doing so frequently lead to and still leads to various punishments. In the Indian countryside beatings, raping women, killing of men women and children, burning of houses wholesale destruction, and ritual humiliation such as forced to eat human excreta, stripping women naked and forcing them to march are not uncommon.  Traditional punishments which were inhumane and cruel for the slightest insubordination were written into the religious texts and implemented by the major dominant caste, overseen by the local Brahmin and ultimately backed up by the king. Some apologists of the caste system and untouchability used to argue that these prescribed punishments were of theoretical nature and that they were never put into practice. This raises the question as to why these were incorporated into these texts in the first place. A comparison with modern day ground reality would indicate that these punishments are mentally hardwired into the minds of the oppressors from a very early age. One writer had asked the question that unless evidence was coming to the contrary, it had to be assumed that these written laws were fully functioning when it was required for them to be.

Brahminical law-givers enjoined upon the ruler to ensure proper observance of caste duties, and inscriptional evidence shows that brahmanized rulers took pride in championing the varna- dharma and actively intervened in regulating caste hierarchy. After all, it was a status system which could not be delinked from the question of power⁵.

So what did the ruling classes both in Japan and in India gain by these discriminating measures?

The Burakumin, robbed of their right to work by discrimination, function as a reserve army, the existence of which enables the employers to hire labour without great cost according to the economic situation prevailing, or, to make them redundant again without provoking great social conflicts – since the majority of Burakumin live in a state of permanent semi-unemployment and are therefore forced to accept even the smallest wage, their existence has the effect of keeping wages low. Their function as wage deflators, on the other hands, favours the reproduction of a discriminatory consciousness and thereby causes a split in the working population⁴.

Untouchability is a cornerstone of the caste system which is continuously hierarchical with theoretical 4 varnas with the untouchables being considered outside of thevarna scheme; at least in theory; but inside of it for all other purposes.

The caste system in the feudalism of the (Japanese) Tokugawa era thus also fulfilled this function of “divide and rule”. By codifying society in castes the aim was to exclude uncontrollable social changes which could have led to a threat to the ruling regime. In this very fact, the cause for the formation of the Eta and Hinin castes must be recognised⁴.

Similar arguments have been put forward pertaining to the lower castes and untouchables in India⁵.

The repression of menial castes, and securing their structured dependence, made agricultural labour cheap and it also reduced the cost of artisanal products and services; for artisan castes had a depressed status with restricted mobility; and hereditary transmission of skill reduced the expenses on training etc. lowering the wage cost as a whole⁵.

Sources:

1.             Roger Yoshio in The Invisible Visible Minority, Buraju Kaiho Kenkyusho, Osaka,1977-page 41.

2.             Martin Kaneko in Some Reconsiderations Concerning the History of Discrimination Against Buraku and the Use    of  Discriminatory Terms – Buraku Liberatio Research Institute, Osaka City, Japan, 1981- pages 122-124.

3.             Ibid – page 123.

4.             Ibid – page 120.

5.             Sauvira Jaiswal in Caste, Origin, Functions and Dimensions of Change – Manohar 2000, Delhi, India pages 18-19.

6.             Long Suffering Brothers and Sisters Unite! Published by Buraku Liberation Research Institute, Osaka 1981- page129.