buraku book bitching
May. 27th, 2011 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomi Japan has its own caste of untouchables, the one-time butchers and tanners and sandal-makers who were once called “the filthy ones” or “the non-people.” Modern governments (by which I mean, post-1868) have very slowly moved to take steps against this discrimination, and in the twentieth century they have most often been called “the village people,” not in any Sixties-ish sense, or “the people to be harmonized with” (very loose translation of an almost meaningless euphemism), and most recently “the discriminated-against village people” or just burakumin. They got their own civil rights movement beginning around 1922, the Levellers, and in the late 20th century there were a series of laws passed which materially improved the living conditions in burakumin areas, doing a lot to bring up the quality of life to the postwar standards which the rest of Japan enjoy. Burakumin were for many years effectively forced to remain in their own poverty-stricken enclaves because of wide-reaching residential, educational, employment, and marriage-related discrimination (the latter along the lines of “My daughter isn’t going to marry no damn burakumin”), but all of these areas have shown a lot of improvement in the last few decades, while by no means yet perfect.
Around the turn of this century, an MA candidate in sociology at a regional university decided to spend a year in the field, doing clerical work at a local office of the Buraku Liberation League. (Once a fairly radical outfit, its work now consists as much of local educational and administrative work as of social justice.) Kurosaka Ai by name (last name first), she subsequently published a book on the experience. The book consists of a series of emails between Kurosaka and her thesis advisor, Fukuoka Yasunori, a professor who has several books on Japan’s minorities to his name.
It’s a book full of a lot of fascinating information, and it drives me absolutely up the wall. Fukuoka writes in an introduction to the book that he was hoping somebody might translate it into English to give it a wider readership, and for a while I was all set to email him and volunteer; but by the time I got to the end I was pretty sure it wasn’t a book I wanted my name on in any form, as much as I enjoyed reading it.
Part of the problem seems simply to be that it was rushed into publication as is, letting the emails stand as they were originally written. There is, thus, a lack of useful background information laid out for people unfamiliar with buraku culture and history, and at the same time a lack of really new ideas or approaches for experts in the field. A number of the emails end in “…and then this also happened but I haven’t had time to write it down,” which is helpful for understanding the state of the beleaguered sociologist in the field, but not much else. A leisurely reexamination of the material gathered, followed by a careful reediting of it into a coherent narrative, would have been so much more valuable for the reader, if not quite as immediate to read.
As I read on, though, I began to wonder if—frankly speaking—Kurosaka was capable of that level of scholarship. She’s obviously a good observer and a good recorder, but as a one-time grad student with a demanding advisor myself, I was honestly shocked at the lack of analysis, of even the concept of analysis. Two examples highlight what I think is the largest problem with this book. In one, Kurosaka is riding to a conference with several of her colleagues, male and female and of various ages, when they begin to reminisce about having their BLL-logoed car stopped by the police, or having the police on their doorsteps. “I always thought criminals were the only ones stopped by the police, but good people like Mr. H and Ms. M get stopped too,” she reflects, with wide-eyed innocence that would be appropriate from a bright thirteen-year-old. From an MA candidate, I would expect no less than a careful consideration of the attitude of the police toward burakumin and vice versa, backed up by anecdata, facts and statistics, and perhaps a discussion of how the buraku community as a whole is affected by its relationship with the police. Nothing like this appears, or is even hinted at.
One more incidence of this takes place at a discussion group including buraku and non-buraku local residents, aiming toward a better mutual understanding. “Well, if the burakumin disappear [into the broader society], discrimination will also disappear, won’t it?” a non-buraku older man suggests. “Buraku disappear! What a scary man,” Kurosaka fulminates—and leaves it at that. It seems to me that this is in fact one of the most important questions the buraku community has to deal with now. Burakumin are no longer economically confined to a given village and a narrowly defined set of jobs; they have far more freedom in education and employment than their forebears did, in relative terms. Two generations ago only 20% or so of burakumin married non-buraku residents; now almost 70% do. In short, it is now far easier for burakumin to blend with non-buraku. And once they do, what will keep them burakumin? They are physically/ethnically identical to the rest of Japanese society, unlike, say, people of color in America. They have no distinct language or religious/cultural barriers, unlike, say, Koreans in Japan. There are no “buraku only” family names, or rather a name that is recognizably burakumin in one community will be standard Japanese a hundred miles away. A generation from now, there will be young men and women with one buraku parent—or even one buraku grandparent—living surrounded by non-buraku at home, school, and work. And they may very well be the majority of those with buraku ancestry. How will buraku identity be preserved as anything else but history? Kurosaka could have taken on this question here, and maybe even offered me some answers, but she turns down a chance to think about it. That’s not my idea of scholarship.
Most to blame for all this is Fukuoka, who was Kurosaka’s advisor and goes on record in the book as the author of many fulsomely praiseful emails to her. Leaving aside the email stage itself, if I were to try to publish something with the problems I’ve detailed above, my grad school advisor would probably have thrown me across the room (at least metaphorically) and demanded far more rigorous, more analytical work of me before he would ever dream of letting my results see the light of day. I am extremely disappointed that Fukuoka seems to have expected so little of his student.
All that said, it’s still an edifying book. I’ll live in hope that Kurosaka will one day see the light and go back to revamp her research and make it that much more valuable.
Around the turn of this century, an MA candidate in sociology at a regional university decided to spend a year in the field, doing clerical work at a local office of the Buraku Liberation League. (Once a fairly radical outfit, its work now consists as much of local educational and administrative work as of social justice.) Kurosaka Ai by name (last name first), she subsequently published a book on the experience. The book consists of a series of emails between Kurosaka and her thesis advisor, Fukuoka Yasunori, a professor who has several books on Japan’s minorities to his name.
It’s a book full of a lot of fascinating information, and it drives me absolutely up the wall. Fukuoka writes in an introduction to the book that he was hoping somebody might translate it into English to give it a wider readership, and for a while I was all set to email him and volunteer; but by the time I got to the end I was pretty sure it wasn’t a book I wanted my name on in any form, as much as I enjoyed reading it.
Part of the problem seems simply to be that it was rushed into publication as is, letting the emails stand as they were originally written. There is, thus, a lack of useful background information laid out for people unfamiliar with buraku culture and history, and at the same time a lack of really new ideas or approaches for experts in the field. A number of the emails end in “…and then this also happened but I haven’t had time to write it down,” which is helpful for understanding the state of the beleaguered sociologist in the field, but not much else. A leisurely reexamination of the material gathered, followed by a careful reediting of it into a coherent narrative, would have been so much more valuable for the reader, if not quite as immediate to read.
As I read on, though, I began to wonder if—frankly speaking—Kurosaka was capable of that level of scholarship. She’s obviously a good observer and a good recorder, but as a one-time grad student with a demanding advisor myself, I was honestly shocked at the lack of analysis, of even the concept of analysis. Two examples highlight what I think is the largest problem with this book. In one, Kurosaka is riding to a conference with several of her colleagues, male and female and of various ages, when they begin to reminisce about having their BLL-logoed car stopped by the police, or having the police on their doorsteps. “I always thought criminals were the only ones stopped by the police, but good people like Mr. H and Ms. M get stopped too,” she reflects, with wide-eyed innocence that would be appropriate from a bright thirteen-year-old. From an MA candidate, I would expect no less than a careful consideration of the attitude of the police toward burakumin and vice versa, backed up by anecdata, facts and statistics, and perhaps a discussion of how the buraku community as a whole is affected by its relationship with the police. Nothing like this appears, or is even hinted at.
One more incidence of this takes place at a discussion group including buraku and non-buraku local residents, aiming toward a better mutual understanding. “Well, if the burakumin disappear [into the broader society], discrimination will also disappear, won’t it?” a non-buraku older man suggests. “Buraku disappear! What a scary man,” Kurosaka fulminates—and leaves it at that. It seems to me that this is in fact one of the most important questions the buraku community has to deal with now. Burakumin are no longer economically confined to a given village and a narrowly defined set of jobs; they have far more freedom in education and employment than their forebears did, in relative terms. Two generations ago only 20% or so of burakumin married non-buraku residents; now almost 70% do. In short, it is now far easier for burakumin to blend with non-buraku. And once they do, what will keep them burakumin? They are physically/ethnically identical to the rest of Japanese society, unlike, say, people of color in America. They have no distinct language or religious/cultural barriers, unlike, say, Koreans in Japan. There are no “buraku only” family names, or rather a name that is recognizably burakumin in one community will be standard Japanese a hundred miles away. A generation from now, there will be young men and women with one buraku parent—or even one buraku grandparent—living surrounded by non-buraku at home, school, and work. And they may very well be the majority of those with buraku ancestry. How will buraku identity be preserved as anything else but history? Kurosaka could have taken on this question here, and maybe even offered me some answers, but she turns down a chance to think about it. That’s not my idea of scholarship.
Most to blame for all this is Fukuoka, who was Kurosaka’s advisor and goes on record in the book as the author of many fulsomely praiseful emails to her. Leaving aside the email stage itself, if I were to try to publish something with the problems I’ve detailed above, my grad school advisor would probably have thrown me across the room (at least metaphorically) and demanded far more rigorous, more analytical work of me before he would ever dream of letting my results see the light of day. I am extremely disappointed that Fukuoka seems to have expected so little of his student.
All that said, it’s still an edifying book. I’ll live in hope that Kurosaka will one day see the light and go back to revamp her research and make it that much more valuable.
