Handbook of Buraku Studies

Timothy D. Amos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781041278573
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040961759
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy

This handbook explores the history, culture, and social challenges of Japan's Burakumin through the multifaceted scholarship of current Buraku Studies. The handbook situates Buraku Studies by examining the origins of the Burakumin, from Japan's medieval outcaste groups and their connections and continuities into the early modern social class system of Tokugawa Japan. The chapters also explore the intersectionality of this group's experiences across gender, class, and migration status, revealing how their voices were marginalized and their liberation efforts were entangled with colonial complicity. The post-war era experiences of the Buraku are examined, revealing the impacts of government-commissioned human rights surveys and anti-discrimination initiatives alongside stigmas present in the real estate market in Buraku areas and the impact of gentrification on these communities. Forging connections across scholarly fields and national borders, the contributions create meaningful and current collective research about Buraku Studies. Engaging with ongoing scholarly conversations within the emerging field of Buraku Studies, this will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Japanese society, history, and culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Explanatory note on style
• Introduction: Buraku Studies
• 1 Outcast status in historical Japan: From the Heian to the early modern period
• 2 Early modern shogunate law and “outcastes”: The “institutionalization” of discrimination and the existence of regionality
• 3 Status discrimination and marginal status: A social history of early modern Japanese Eta/Kawata
• 4 Military service and status promotion: Overcoming and using status barriers in late-Tokugawa and early-Meiji period Japan
• 5 Outcast status groups and the dismantling of the early modern status order
• 6 Landownership, status, and local society in early Meiji Asakusa-Shinchō
• 7 The birth of urban buraku communities
• 8 Competing narratives of liberation: Prewar Buraku activism and the Suiheisha movement
• 9 Gender and subaltern in the 1920s women’s Suiheisha movement
• 10 The Buraku liberation movement 1945–2025
• 11 The Dōwa policy process
• 12 Settlement work and Rinpokan
• 13 The Sayama Incident, the Buraku issues behind it, and the current situation
• 14 Between writing and advocacy: The media ecology of Buraku Bungei
• 15 Postwar public opinion surveys on human rights: A consideration of what “discriminators” may think about discrimination
• 16 The contemporary nature of Buraku discrimination: Is it more geographical than genealogical?
• 17 Gentrification and spatial inequality in Buraku communities
• 18 Identity formation among people from discriminated Buraku communities: Historical developments and the current situation
• 19 Creating a knowledge of resistance: Questions raised by Buraku women
• Index