THE MAINTENANCE OF ‘OLD CUSTOMS’

PEOPLE IN THE discriminated communities were freed from their status and its restrictions by the Liberation Declaration but lost the occupations which had been one defining feature of that status and were often thereby thrust into still further economic difficulty. It was reported that the Buraku communities after ‘Liberation’ found it difficult to make a living from farming and that you could see these people forced to live ‘just like beggars and hinin.’ Amid these conditions people in some Buraku communities made communal decisions to abandon the occupations that they had previously depended on – giving up making shoes, dealing in dead horses and cattle, or involvement in the leather industry – and made efforts to be treated as ‘the same’ as their neighbours. For example, they asked to be allowed to send their children to the local schools and generally to be included among ‘civilized people’. However most ‘ordinary’ people took the view that they did not want to have anything to do with residents of the discriminated communities. Moreover if, for example, the owner of a public bath house were to allow people from a nearby Buraku to use his facility other people would stop coming. So, they would prevent Burakumin from using their baths. Children from Buraku communities were often refused entry to the same schools as other children and so they had to attend schools that ended up being exclusively for Buraku children. They were also excluded from taking part in the activities of the local Shinto shrines. In all of these various ways discrimination continued to surround the everyday lives of Buraku people.

There were numerous disputes that arose between Buraku communities and their neighbours. Local officials played a role in these. They tried to persuade those subject to discrimination to put up with their situation as it was still not long since they had been made ‘the same as other commoners’. Some exclusion was inevitable, they were told, and so they should be patient and avoid arrogantly asserting their claims to be ‘the same’. The Meiji government had made a bold start by proclaiming the Liberation Edict in order to demonstrate both at home and abroad their commitment to ‘enlightenment’ ideas inspired by the idea of ‘one monarch for all the people’.