INVESTIGATING ‘SELF AWARENESS’

FOLLOWING THE RICE riots and the end of the First World War, statements from people in Buraku communities started to appear in local newspapers. For example, in a letter to the Ehime Shimbun on 20 August 1919 the correspondent, after expressing his doubts about the effectiveness of ‘improvements to the special buraku’, declares that ‘Every time we hear about social this and special that and the need for special treatment we feel as if our hearts are about to break…’, ’I do not think that we are in any way inferior to normal people in level of education, standards of hygiene or general moral values.’ Moreover, rather than ‘sympathetic conciliation’ or ‘Buraku improvements’ what they seek is a recognition that the Burakumin are improving themselves.

The movement seeking the self-awareness of Buraku people bursts out all over the place in various forms. One central theme of discussion in ‘Alarm Bell’, Keishō, the journal of the Sankyoshō a group which was formed in the Buraku district of Ōfuku, Chiki-gun, Nara prefecture was this topic of self-awareness. Taking pride in contributing to state and society as ‘subjects’ as one person put it, ‘Young men, my dear friends, as well as being young men of the village we should plan on reforming our ideas as young men’ (Marubashi Ryuka, The Sin of Non-Awareness, November 1920). They appealed to the younger generation to stand up for themselves and urged them to overcome the improvement movement ideas which had been dominant until then (Matsuo 1974).

THE SWALLOW ASSOCIATION (TSUBAMEKAI) – SEEKING A DISCRIMINATION FREE SOCIETY

The young men who came together to form the Tsubamekai (Swallow Association) which was to play a central role in the process of the formation of the Suiheisha started out with similar ideas. It was formed in 1920 in a Buraku community called Kashiwara, in Wakigami village, Katsuragi-gun Nara prefecture by a group of young men that included Saikō Mankichi (the pen name of Kiyohara Kazutaka), Sakamoto Seiichirō, Komai Kisaku and Ikeda Kichisaku.

Saikō had moved to Tokyo planning to become an artist but his encounter with discrimination there destroyed his dreams and he returned home.