A Tale of Two Slums: State Policy, Minority Movements, and Inter-minority Relations in Two Buraku Communities in Postwar Japan
Jeffrey Bayliss - Assistant Professor of History, Trinity College
As the largest and most vocal minority groups in postwar Japan, the Koreans and the Burakumin have received much scholarly attention, especially in recent years. While enhancing our understanding of the way in which discrimination shapes the experiences of both of these groups, however, most studies of either minority overlook other salient aspects of their experience of discrimination, such as the tendency for similarly disadvantaged groups to end up living in the same communities, and the problems of mutual discrimination between them that often result. This presentation addresses such issues through a comparison of two such communities in Japan during the immediate postwar and high-growth eras, to explore how government policies, local politics, minority organization objectives, and “on the ground” conditions in each shaped interminority relations in strikingly divergent ways.